


Intersecting Geodesics

by NancyBrown



Series: Intersections [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alien Character(s), Alien Planet, Captain Bad Touch, Children of Earth Compliant, Children of Earth Fix-It, Dubious Consent, Future Fic, M/M, Romance, Time Agency, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-04
Updated: 2010-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:18:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyBrown/pseuds/NancyBrown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuck in a time with a Jack who hasn't met him yet, all Ianto wants is a way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Rating**: R (language, situations, violence)  
> **Spoilers**: up through CoE, brief mentions of events from "Pack Animals," "Almost Perfect" and "Lost Souls"  
> **Characters**: Ianto, Jack, John, (Eleven and announced companion)  
> **Warnings**: Various shades of dub-con, non-descriptive mentions of sex trafficking, character death. I am operating under the assumption that John Hart is Captain Bad Touch, and so should you for the duration of this story.  
> **Betas**: Deepest thanks go out to 51stcenturyfox and Amilyn for the Britpicking, beta work, and all those other little details that made this story stronger; anything that's still misplaced, misspelled, misplotted or just plain missing is my fault  
> **Disclaimer**: Not my characters, not my show. If they'd catch a clue and shut up in my head, we'd all be happier.
> 
> [Children of Time Awards Winner](http://cota.worldsoutthere.com/r6win.htm), Round Six, Torchwood, Slash

VVVVV  
Prologue  
VVVVV

From _Report for the United Council 372Alpha6: On the Time Agency, _written by Killandra Gaison, copyright 5092:

_"The Time Agency was chartered in the year 4986 by the United Council for one purpose: the preservation of the human race. Other sentient species have been added to the charter via amendment, but the primary goal is and always has been humanity first …_

_[excerpt]  
"The Time War is shrouded in myth and mystery. What was Gallifrey? The gods who lived there, whence did they vanish? We cannot know, because of the nature of the War, but what we do know is that it happened, and the fallout echoed through the universe. For one moment, which in our area of space lasted almost four standard days, we could know all of time, all that had ever happened, would happen. The Hypertime Moment. We could not identify all the information in that span, no one could, but what we could identify were the gaps, places in time where humanity was gone, or nearly so: bottlenecks of human history where the survival of our species depended on a tiny population._

_"The Agency, using technology which was rapidly developed during the Hypertime Moment and further technologies as acquired throughout history, identifies these gaps and fills them. Small human populations are cultivated on unpopulated worlds a century or more before they are needed to mingle with the depleted gene pools._

_"To maintain a healthy stock (some members of the radical humans-only fringe use the word 'pure') these populations are blended from several sources in Earth's pre-contact past. Sites of major, and minor, disaster are scouted by trained Agents for use as raw material: volcano eruptions, transportation failures, other locations where near-total mortality is guaranteed and the mass removal of the stock involved will not be noted by history. Special emphasis is placed on the acquisition of adolescents and adults; the infamous Hamelin incident put an end to the acquisition of child groups. (The Agent involved was fired.) The Agency has some interest in warfare situations, specifically those where the historical outcome indicates total annihilation of one side; in this case Agents are authorised and instructed to kill on sight, both soldiers and civilians, with an eye towards balanced male and female casualties. As Agency technology has limited range of use on deceased stock, one mass murder is more efficient than a series of strategic kills, although a savvy Time Agent will learn how to kill one person in order to line up thirty more for transport …_

_[excerpt]  
"Regarding Time Agents: Agents are recruited as adolescents. A psychological test is administered to match against the desired profile; suitable matches are rare. An Agent must be able to exude physical and mental perfection to any given crowd of humans or other sentients, so as to gain their trust. An Agent should be well-dressed and groomed, attractive and easy-going. She/he/ze must also have the ability to kill someone without qualm, to acquire information by whatever means necessary, and most importantly, to identify large groups of people who are about to die and not be tempted into changing history to save a single one. Not all groups identified by Agents can, will, or should be saved for the program, and it is the responsibility of each individual Agent to decide whether her/his/zir assignment qualifies. Eighty percent of assignments do not qualify. The suicide rate among Agents, including missions that go bad and are later deemed suicides, hovers at twenty percent; the rate is highest among new recruits and lowest among those who have already drunk, drugged and fornicated themselves numb._

_"They're all mad."[This sentence has been removed in final version of report, and the author has been issued a verbal reprimand.] _

VVVVV  
Chapter 1  
VVVVV

The very first thing he was aware of was the sound of something beating. Fear gripped him, and a memory: four beats, very fast, ingrained in his thoughts, in everyone's thoughts. Saxon! But that had been four and this was two. In out. Beat beat. Crunching slightly like gravel under boots. His heartbeat, echoing in his ears.

Ianto opened his eyes. He was cold, though his clothes were on, and he lay still on something hard and flat. A table? He flicked his gaze to the side, saw other bodies (_bodies? _) around him, squared up like checkers on a board. A floor.

A voice he could not see said something unintelligible, and he started, could not sit up. Weakness and nausea fought for control and he closed his eyes until both passed. A different voice, lower than the first, spoke. He opened his eyes again, and now, about two metres from his feet, he saw two men dressed in white with PDAs, noting something. The first one, with the higher voice, gestured away from Ianto to something he couldn't see, and the second made another note.

From beside him, he heard a whimper, and he turned his head, only gaining a little vertigo for his trouble. A woman, youngish, blondish, plain edging on pretty, had her eyes open and frightened. She also wore a suit, he noticed, and his memory tickled at him. The two men noted her; they were counting as people woke up.

He tried a friendly smile for the woman. They could be in mortal peril (_virus? _) but he'd been in mortal peril enough times to know a smile was rarely amiss, even if it was just to precede head-butting someone who intended to eat him later.

He should probably have been more concerned than he was when that image led to thoughts of Jack.

"Jack," he said, or tried to say. His mouth was dry and bitter, like a hangover but also like nothing he'd felt before. His head was so fuzzy. Jack had been with him, hadn't he? They'd been …

Ianto sat up with a painful gasp, and his head was swimming and there was nowhere to puke that wasn't on himself or someone else, so he bent his head between his knees until it passed. The aliens, Thames House, the air was poison and he'd felt his body shut down and Jack had been there.

When he could move, he looked around at the wakening, terrified faces. No Jack, no Gwen, no one he recognised but still familiar. How many people had been locked in with them when everything had gone to shit so quickly?

Others were rising, not all of them as successful at stopping their nausea. He closed his nose to the sudden wretched smell, breathing through his mouth. The woman beside him moved into a crouch.

"What's going on?" she asked. "I was at work. The alarm went off."

"The building shut down. The 456 released a virus." We died, he did not add. Jack had been dying with him, but Jack always came back. Where was he? Had he revived them somehow?

"Please," said the man with the deeper voice. "Do not be afraid."

His partner said, "You are experiencing side effects from the processing. These will pass soon."

"Americans," said the woman.

"I don't think so," Ianto said, watching them closely. The room they were in was unadorned, but the quality of the diffuse light surrounding them, the feel of the floor beneath them, even the taste of the air (aside from the unfortunate response from some of the others), these were all wrong. The men's accents sounded American, but weren't.

The other (_survivors? prisoners? _) men and women began to rise to their feet. Ianto joined them, offering a hand to the woman.

"Charlotte," she said quietly, shaking the hand before she let go. "Second floor, finance."

"Ianto." He paused. "Research."

She didn't question him, so he figured it was a safer answer than, "Torchwood. We apparently got you all killed."

The man with the deeper voice said, "You have all been chosen for a special project. The future of humanity is at stake, and we have selected you to ensure our survival."

Ianto blinked. He hadn't been sure what to expect. This wouldn't have been even close.

"Once your processing is complete, you will be given a skill set. Our needs are for farming, animal husbandry, hunting, gathering, food preparation and storage, maintenance of contemporary machinery, and child care. You will be matched with the best fit for your already existing skills."

"Excuse me," said a man close to where the two men stood. "I don't understand. I have two children at home, a wife. Where are they?"

The man with the higher voice spoke. "I'm afraid you will not see your family again."

A commotion broke out in the room. Charlotte gasped, and Ianto glanced at the diamond on her finger as she began to fidget. The prisoners with children became obvious quickly as they shouted for answers.

Ianto began searching the room for identifiable exits.

The man with the lighter voice - Ianto never did learn the man's name - raised his arms in a calming gesture. "All your questions will be answered," he said, and Ianto did not believe him. "You've been through a traumatic experience and you will need time to adjust."

His partner said, "You need to know that, in your time, you died." More gasps. His breath had been so hard to draw, he'd felt the numbness creep through his body from his feet up, until it claimed his heart and lungs. Then darkness. In your time?

"This isn't Heaven?" someone said, a woman towards the back of the room.

The light-voiced man looked confused, and his partner muttered something in his ear. "Ah. No. This is not an afterlife. You've been healed of your injuries and illness." Ianto's hand went to his face, found smooth skin on both sides. "You have also been immunised against any diseases you may encounter, as well as any to which you were previously exposed. You are healthier than you have ever been."

A trickle of fear went through him. This was familiar, too familiar. When the few poor bastards who came back from the Rift made their way to them, this was the same speech the nurses gave.

Against his better judgment, Ianto raised his hand. "What year is this?"

The two men turned their attention onto him, and he regretted asking. Drawing attention to himself was only going to make things worse. "That information will be given to you at an appropriate time."

So they had travelled through time. Someone had kidnapped them. These two men? Possibly more? The Rift didn't extend to London, but there were other ways. They were dead on the record, probably their families had been told the bodies were incinerated to prevent the spread of the virus, and they'd been stolen away. Just like any number of clean-up jobs he'd done himself.

Jack wasn't there. Jack would have recovered and walked out. Jack thought he was dead.

The nausea came back and he just missed his shoes. Charlotte patted him on the back kindly and handed him a handkerchief.

VVVVV

They were led into a different room, one that wasn't filled with sick. Here they found food and drink, and there were bathroom facilities, though these were not divided by gender. Ianto took the opportunity to wash his face and hands. Small mirrors were available, and he visually confirmed that the cut on his cheek was completely healed without a scar.

Jack had once given them a briefing on nanogenes, with instructions on the handling of same should they manage to find a sample. Owen had nearly wet himself with anticipation the one time Suzie had located a likely source, but the tiny robots had been deactivated and nothing Jack could do would fix them.

This looked like that handiwork, according to Jack's description, but if they were lost in time, who was to say?

He found Charlotte by the food table, looking lost.

"I just started last week," she said, nibbling something that Ianto thought tasted like stale crackers. "Kevin, that's my fiancé," she held up the ring nervously, "he wanted me to come to London with him, and I got the job. Plum position, civil service." Her voice cracked.

"My brother-in-law likes to tell jokes about the civil service. How many government workers does it take to change a light bulb?"

"How many?"

"Three thousand, two hundred fifty eight. But it's still dark when they're done."

"That's not really very funny."

"No. But I never could explain to Jonny why not." She smiled, a little.

He watched the others around him, noting the varying degrees of shock. The handful of survivors from Canary Wharf had looked this same way, huddled in the UNIT shelter as they awaited debriefing. Ianto had shivered beside Sheilagh and Quint, the sole remnants of their department; Penny had run from the forced lineup by their captors, had been cut down by the metal men, while Bob had stood first in line and had screamed through his conversion before everything had gone crazy. Crazier. Sheilagh's face had been so pale, and she'd swallowed an entire bottle of Xanax a week later. Quint had not been able to form coherent sentences, and he'd jumped from a bridge two months after Ianto started work in Cardiff.

Ianto was sane. He knew that he was sane because he'd worked hard at it, had found things to be sane for, found reasons to live.

Some of the shell-shocked faces in the room with him now were clearly not going to survive. He noted this as dispassionately as he could.

A man beside them at the food table had pulled out his mobile and was dialing fruitlessly.

"There's no signal," he said. "It's supposed to work anywhere in the world."

Numbly, Ianto reached down to his own pocket. He'd called Rhiannon, and then Gwen, and then he'd put it away rather than dropping it into the nearest bin. As he touched his mobile, one of their keepers, a woman, said, "We will need you to surrender your technology. You will be given appropriate tools to your time period upon arrival." She put on a smile. "I'm sure our technology will look like magic to you."

More keepers, these in blue, (_guards, they are guards_) circulated among them, taking mobiles, wristwatches, even the hearing aid from a fellow who seemed surprised that he no longer needed it. They made their way closer to Ianto and Charlotte.

He'd spotted the door the most recent guards had come through. Only a sliver of cracked light showed that it was unlatched.

In a very low voice, Ianto said, "If they take my phone, we lose the one very slim chance we have of getting home. I'm going to go, now. You have three seconds to decide if you're coming with me."

Charlotte stared at him, her mouth in a little O, and Ianto allowed her the full three seconds before he said, "Sorry," and moved as efficiently away from her and through the crowd as he could without drawing the attention of the guards. He never saw Charlotte again.

His handguns were still in the holsters. Empty now, they'd do him no good, so he palmed them into the coat pockets of people he passed.

Ianto was near the door now, could see nothing past the crack. Around him, people milled, some weeping, others still trying to call home before the guards came. Already, he watched two men struggle with the blue-clad guards, and fought down a surge of pride. He'd seen too many people roll over in the face of authority lately, and it was about time.

The fight gave him the distraction he needed to put his hand on the door, backing against it as though he hadn't noticed it was there. It gave, and he took a breath before pushing it open, right into another set of guards.

"You're just in time!" Ianto said. "They've got guns!" He pointed to the two people he'd given his weapons to, and as the guards hurried in to subdue them, he bolted.

Outside, there were corridors, the same odd materials, the same odd lighting. He had only seconds before they would pursue him, and given his complete lack of awareness of his surroundings, they would catch him. His choices were to find a place to hide, or to run like hell.

He ran.

Corridors led to corridors, and he passed open and closed doors, people in various forms of clothing. Only the ones in the area he fled seemed to be in primary colors, perhaps to soothe the prisoners. He saw signs, but everything was written in a language and alphabet he didn't know, and his eyes watered to make sense of what he read before he gave up and just kept going. He passed an open door with no one inside, and hurried in, praying to anyone who happened to be listening that the room didn't have someone behind the door, that his pursuers wouldn't look, that he had enough time.

The room was empty, and he hid behind the door. Around him, he saw incomprehensible machines, electronics (he suspected) which would have made Tosh drool with desire. And a window.

Footsteps sprinted by where he waited, his heart hammering in his mouth. As soon as they had turned the corner of another hallway, he pulled out his mobile.

Martha had given them the number when the Earth had gone on its voyage across the stars. Of course he'd committed it to memory.

No signal.

Ianto closed his eyes. Then he dialed again, because really, he had no other thoughts right now. The Doctor must hear the call, must come.

The mobile did not connect, did tell him its battery was low. He put it back into his pocket before risking a peek out of the room. Empty hallway. He peered out the window, but it was night wherever and whenever he was, and he could make out lights. He estimated that he was five storeys up, perhaps six.

He backtracked to the last turn, then made his way to a staircase. Ianto counted out five storeys' worth of stairs and tried the level. An alarm sounded. He jerked back from the door, but then his nose caught the blessed smell of fresh air and he pushed through. An emergency exit.

He was still one level up from the ground, at the top of a metal staircase. He took the stairs two at a time, jumped the last four, and ran as soon as his toes touched down.

Outside, the dark sky and the harsh lights confused him. He bit his lip nervously, taking a precious second to look around. Alien planet, or Earth far in the future. He didn't know where he was, either way, and if he was found, he'd be taken back to the other survivors, at best, relieved of his phone, and (_skill set? _) sent somewhere else, never to see his own time again, his family, anyone.

Ahead of him, he saw a crowd of bodies, and he ran for them, hoping to lose himself in the crush of humanity. And other, as he immediately found out, dashing between a five-armed purple alien wearing an aquamarine coat and its companion, an upright dog naked but for the fur. He smiled and nodded in what he hoped was a pleasant fashion and hurried into the thickest part of the crowd, which bustled in a distinct direction away from the building where he'd awakened.

Perhaps he imagined it, but he swore he heard running steps behind him. Ianto glanced back, saw blue-clad men and women with long objects that could have been guns, or lasers, or just sticks, but none of them meant good things for him.

"Halt!" he heard one order, and he ran faster.

The guards spoke English, well enough to understand him. The voices surrounding him spoke tongues he didn't recognise at all. No help there.

In about ten more seconds, they were going to send guards to either side of him and ahead, and cut him off from the front. He dashed to his left, spying an alley, if that's what it was, forcing them to swerve behind him. The street was narrow, and unless they already had someone in place at the other end, they couldn't manoeuvre around him yet.

All he wanted was five minutes. Here in the street, there was a chance, however faint, that his mobile would pick up a slender signal and go through.

At the end of the alley, he ducked hard left, knowing he was in plain view of his pursuers, then dashed out on a long curve right, burying himself in a knot of slower-moving pedestrians and matching their pace as casually as he could. He heard the sounds of the guards as they followed his fake trail, refused to look around.

His mouth was dry, and he was finding it heard to breathe. Torchwood led him to more than his share of nightly chases, but he'd been dead a few hours ago, and that ought to account for the pain in his side.

The group he was in passed a series of open doors, where life in every shade and shape lounged out to the street amid music and smoke and scents he could almost identify. No one looked twice at him, not even the people, and he was using that term to include several someones with more heads than Ianto had fingers, he walked with.

As the sounds of pursuit tickled at the edge of his hearing again, he picked a smoky, sullen door at random and ran inside.

The darkness was practically its own entity here, and Ianto liked it immediately. Hard to see meant he would be hard to find. Bodies writhed, mostly dressed in clothes and fur, bumping into him without apology. Around him, his ears were assaulted by noise just rhythmic enough to qualify as music, which explained the dancing. His nose detected foodstuffs and something else.

His mouth quirked, putting it together.

A room full of not-especially-well-dressed humans and more, all intoxicated and all bent on finding a suitable partner or two to shag. Of course they smelled of sex, and a particular smell at that. And here he'd always thought Jack was lying about not using aftershave, though to be fair, anyone who tasted that good stepping out of a shower stall was probably telling the truth about his own body chemistry.

Telling himself this wasn't a good time for the beginnings of an erection had never worked before, either, not since he was fourteen.

Ianto moved towards the wall, out of the press of bodies. He kept his eyes on the doorway in case he was followed, then pulled out his mobile again. No longer inside the large structure, he had a chance.

No signal.

"Fuck," he said out loud.

"Ah, English!" said a green-haired vision beside him, in an accent that could have been German but wasn't.

"Yes. English. Do you speak English?"

"Yea," he, or possibly she, said. "English, yea." The alien began to grind against him, which wasn't helping with the arousal, or more to the point, was.

"Where are we?" he asked, dancing against the alien as he saw the others do in the dim light, trying to blend in as he got his bearings.

"Carbuncle." The ludicrous word caught him. Was that the planet? The city?

A laugh, deep and warm and filled with pleasure. Ianto would know that laugh if he had been dead a thousand years, and perhaps he had.

Jack.

Ianto broke away from the alien, struggled towards the back of the pub, this was a pub or a nightclub, close enough to either not to matter, and there Jack was sitting at a table with a gorgeous woman, human, pressed hungrily against him. His eyes were on her, and his hands. His laugh came again, low and perfect as he mouthed something in her ear that made her eyes go wide, and the smile on her face spread.

Anger would be easy now, and jealousy, but Ianto was out of his time, and this could be centuries after his alleged death, and this was Jack. Anger and jealousy had no purpose, no place.

But logic wasn't exactly knocking at the door, either.

Twice this had worked. Twice he'd been in a position for Jack not to know him, and had found a way to tell him without words.

He slipped into the seat next to Jack at the table, grabbed his chin as carefully as he could, and drew his mouth in for a deep kiss. Jack's eyes flew open, though he didn't pull away. Ianto pressed lips and teeth and tongue into service, moving his jaw exactly the way he knew would drive Jack wild.

He pulled back at last, tingling, waited for the recognition in Jack's eyes.

Which did not come. Jack said something that Ianto didn't understand, then shoved him away and returned his interest to the woman in his arms.

Third time? Not the charm.

Ianto dove in for another kiss, was stopped by Jack's solid arm, and then a futuristic gun was pointed between his eyes.

Jack repeated the thing he had said before. Ianto shook his head. "Please, I don't understand. Jack, it's me. Speak English."

"English!" shouted his former dance partner.

"English?" Jack said, in his accent that wasn't American. "Okay, in English. Go away." He enunciated like someone speaking to a small child or an idiot. The gun lowered.

"Jack, I was taken. It may have been a long time for you. It's Ianto. Please tell me you remember." He could take a lot of things, up to and including being kidnapped by unknown forces from the future and told he was dead to everyone back home, but right now, the distrust and complete unfamiliarity in Jack's eyes would be enough to send him over the edge he'd carefully skirted thus far. "Jack … "

"Is that your name in English?" asked the woman, her own accent heavy with vowels Ianto couldn't identify. Russo-Slavic perhaps, with a hint of Afrikaans.

"No," said Jack. But Jack had stolen his name from a dead man, hadn't he, and for all Ianto knew about him, his real name wasn't something that ever had come up. The woman slunk to her feet, holding Jack's hand as she did, and moved to the bar for more drinks.

Finally Ianto's eyes had adjusted to the light enough to take him in, and he drew back.

He'd spent nights studying Jack as he slept, those brief times Jack let himself sleep, redolent with sex in whatever bed they'd fallen into. Too, he'd watched him during long days, in his office, on missions, following every word and gesture until Ianto had memorised all the tiny surfaces on Jack's face, knew to a millimetre where the crinkles had formed at the edge of Jack's eyes and stopped forever. After everything with Owen and Tosh, he'd spent another week refamiliarising himself with the microscopic changes Jack had undergone with two thousand more years between them, even as they worked around Jack's newly touchy relationships with both enclosed and open spaces.

This Jack was young. Younger than he'd ever been in Ianto's experience, even the time he'd come to Cardiff with the Doctor and Rose, and their Jack had thought he'd wiped the CCTV completely.

Ianto sat back in his seat, and his eyes went to the door. The blue-uniformed guards had just walked in and were looking around.

He was lost. Of the two people in the universe who might have helped him, one was unreachable and the other hadn't met him yet. There was no time. He had nothing. He …

Ianto turned to Jack. "I know about Gray."

Like a laser, Jack's attention beaded on him now. "Say that again."

"Your brother. Gray. I have information. If they take me away, they'll wipe my memory." That was probably a lie, but he didn't know. While digging in his pocket for his mobile, he'd brushed a pack of Retcon that he'd taken to keeping on his person for missions gone bad. It was one way out, but a bullet would be faster. They'd probably confiscate it when they caught him anyway. "Help me."

Jack's eyes flicked to the guards, who still struggled with the light level as they closely examined the bar's patrons. "Under the table."

Ianto slid down, practically between Jack's legs. In other circumstances, this would be, and had been, the start of a really good night. As it was, terror and a growing sense of homesickness had killed any lingering desire he had, despite being suddenly up close to Jack's crotch.

Over his head, he heard Jack speak in that same strange language everyone spoke here, and the response from the guards. The tone in his words was easy to decipher: sorry, officers, not here. The tone in theirs was respectful but insistent, and Jack finally had to order them away, barking in annoyance.

Another set of legs came under the table - Jack's friend - and her laugh glittered in the air as the guards left. Ianto watched the guards from the cracks in the cloth over the table until their feet were out the door and past where he could see.

He counted to thirty, then climbed back up into the seat.

Jack's gun was waiting for him. "You know about Gray."

"You were holding his hand as you ran. His hand slipped from yours. You didn't know." Jack hadn't wept the words into his shoulder, as Ianto thought perhaps he would have done were their situations reversed. The quiet tone in his voice, absent, like he was telling a child's story, that had been much worse, and Ianto had held him for hours, that night two days after the bombs, after Tosh and Owen died and the world had ended.

The woman stood. "I'll see you," she said in English.

"This had better be good." Jack glared at Ianto. "I was going to get nobbed."

"No, you weren't," she said with a laugh, and was gone into the crowd again.

The gun held. "Tell me."

"He's alive," Ianto said, because it was kind and it was true.

Jack drew in a ragged breath. "Where?"

Ianto placed his hands on the table. He closed his eyes. He was still lost. No way to reach the Doctor and explain. If he went back to where he'd awakened, he'd be more lost, probably forever. Jack was, not for the first time, his only hope right now, and Ianto had only two things to offer him of any value. Sex was clearly available free-flowing hot and cold, so that coinage wasn't worth much. All he had was the very scant information about Gray, and he had to spend it as wisely as possible.

"I can't tell you that right now."

"Why not?"

"Because people are trying to capture or kill me or both, and as much as I'd like to help you find your brother, I'd also like to be alive in the morning and not shipped to another planet in another time to be a farmer."

"So you did escape the Agency."

"Agency?"

"The Time Agency. Which you wouldn't know about if you're one of the stock." Jack let out a breath. "I should turn you in."

"If you do, you'll never know about your brother." Not for over a century, anyway.

"Come on," Jack said, and grabbed his arm.

"Where are we going?"

"Away from here. I want some fresh air." He half-escorted, half-dragged Ianto into the street, where, fortunately, no one was waiting to arrest him.

Jack kept his hand close on Ianto's wrist, not allowing him escape, which Ianto was fine with as long as it meant avoiding the Agency. Jack had been a Time Agent, once. The new strap on his wrist indicated that time was probably now.

The streets they passed through were less crowded than when Ianto had made his bid for freedom. Humans and aliens and things that looked like mixes among them all wandered past shops and restaurants, lolled in doorways and spread arms and tentacles out windows from what could have been kitchens or torture rooms.

Bulged, organic buildings squatted around them like mushrooms, while spindly towers poked among them winnowed their way into the sky, piercing the night clouds. Ianto took it all in, wanting to remember this.

"Are we on Earth?" he asked as they crossed a street filled with low-riding wheeled vehicles zooming past at breakneck speeds. "No flying cars. I always wanted a flying car."

"Too pasten," Jack said, walking up to a spired building and swiping his hand across the front plate. "No, we're not on Earth."

Inside, the building appeared to be made of the same plasticky material as the Agency building, with the same diffuse light. Jack stepped onto a glowing pad, bringing Ianto with him, and the pad whooshed them in a blink to another floor.

Down one hallway and then another, and Jack wiped his hand over a door. As he stepped in, he removed his boots. "Yours too," he said, when Ianto paused.

He wondered what he had been expecting. The room wasn't large, perhaps three metres to each gently curved side. Chairs and a disheveled table were attached to one wall. The other was filled from floor to ceiling with shelves and drawers with half-folded clothing stuffed and overflowing, and objects Ianto could not name. Everything was in shades of brown and red and mustard yellow. A circular window like a porthole looked out from the far wall, and a few books were piled on the sill.

That was it.

As he stepped into the room, he noticed the floor was rather springy. He tiptoed his way to one of the chairs and sat down.

"This is more private," said Jack. "We can talk. Where are you from?"

It sounded like a friendly come-on, though most things did from Jack.

"Early twenty-first century Earth. We were attacked." He paused. Timelines were tricky things. "I woke up here."

Jack nodded. "Twenty-first century?"

"Yes."

"But you know about my brother."

"You and I have crossed paths before. We will." Ianto frowned, and Jack waved his hand.

"English isn't suited for time travel tenses."

"No." Ianto smiled.

"What do you want from me?"

"A trip." He pointed at Jack's Vortex Manipulator. "I want to be returned to my time, shortly after I left. That's all. And I'll tell you what I know about Gray."

Jack's mouth quirked. "Oh, is that all? Just a bit of a jaunt back to the twenty-first century?" His eyes went hard. "You can tell Georgn I don't appreciate jokes."

"What?"

"I'm not buying it. This is a test or a setup, and I'm not playing."

"It's neither. Please, Jack, I need your help."

"What is 'Jack'? You keep saying the word."

"It's the name I know you under. The one you use when we meet." He debated telling him the full name, but again, timelines. "I don't know your real name."

"Jaxon," he said, and Ianto's eyes went wide at the unexpected gift, and the implication he wouldn't live long enough to tell anyone else. "But I change it regularly. First rule: pick a name close enough to yours that you can remember, and be able to discard it quickly. Which leads us to your name."

Ianto didn't even hesitate. "James Bond. Glad to meet you."

Jack threw back his head and laughed. "You know, that's almost obscure enough to work."

"I can remember it, anyway."

"So, James, why are you trying to get me fired?"

"Excuse me?"

"The last half of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-second are strictly off-limits to Time Agents unless operating under special dispensation. There's a team of maybe three people who get that dispensation. Nobody else."

"I don't understand. Can you not get there?"

"Oh, I can get anywhere I want to. They put in a binder circuit," he tapped his strap, "but if you don't gran it in your first two weeks, you're probably going to wash out anyway." He leaned in to Ianto. "But you're not nearly pretty enough for me to risk getting fired taking you there."

"Then I need you to help me contact someone who will. There's a man called the Doctor. He's a friend of yours, or will be." And then there were some forms of jealousy Ianto was less good at restraining. "A Time Lord."

"Time Lords are a myth. They're from a reality that doesn't exist anymore."

"Never mind that he comes over for tea, then." Not strictly true, but Ianto had always pictured it anyway: the Doctor in their Hub, a cup of perfectly-prepared tea in hand, and Ianto would find the ideal thing to say to him to make him rethink calling Jack away. The best fantasy ended with Jack telling the Doctor, "No, I choose to stay here," at which point even Ianto's imagination shut down in embarrassment.

"It's not happening." Jack sat back, lounging. "Look, you got caught up in a Time Agency operation. We scout out disaster sites, we bring back people who wouldn't have otherwise survived, we cover our tracks. That's what happens. You get to live, we get colonists for times and places where humans are scarce. Everyone wins."

"I didn't want to be a colonist."

"You were dead. You didn't get a vote."

"What about my family? My friends?" What about you? Jack would go to pieces without him, would blame himself just as he had blamed himself for Suzie and Owen and Tosh and their predecessors. He'd do something stupid and then run off in a sulk, and Gwen had her own life to live and could not be relied upon to bring him back, ready for another day. "I'm needed."

"Everyone thinks they're needed. Mostly, they're wrong. Other people will raise your children. Your wife or husband or whatever will move on. The paperwork will say the bodies were burned, by mistake or by order." Jack grinned. "I'm good at faking paperwork."

"Yes," Ianto said. He didn't add, "But Tosh and I were better."

"You're dead, James. You don't want to be a farmer and serve the greater good of your species in a time when it needs you, that's your business, but you're not going back. Now tell me what you know about my brother."

"No." His heart hammered in his chest. His eyes, not wanting to meet Jack's, scattered over the papers on the table. Nothing he could read.

"I could shoot you."

"Then you'd never know."

"I didn't say I'd shoot to kill."

"I have nothing else to bargain with," Ianto said. "You must understand, I would love to tell you. But I can't, not until I know you won't turn me in or abandon me to the street."

"You don't know that I won't as soon as I get the info."

"Let me stay here, at least tonight."

"Now that is exactly what I had in mind." Like a cat, Jack was around the table, and his mouth was on Ianto's, and he let himself enjoy this feeling, enjoy Jack's teeth on his lower lip, before he pulled away.

"Aside from the fact that I do know what you're like, what makes you think I intend to sleep with you?"

Jack's laugh was low, and his breath ripe with a drink Ianto couldn't name. "You show up at my club, at my table, and you evict the woman I'm trying to bring home with me. Then you stick your tongue down my throat … "

"I did not."

"Throat. Down."

"Maybe a bit," he admitted.

"While dressed in full fetish gear."

"Excuse me?" Ianto glanced down at his clothes again. He'd left the suit coat behind, but otherwise was dressed in perfect business attire, which he'd bought with a stolen credit card yesterday, for some version of the word.

Jack's grin was huge now. He wrapped his hand in Ianto's tie. "You're wearing a leash." He tugged, drawing Ianto's neck closer for a kiss. "And you're wrapped up like a present." His fingers went to the buttons of the waistcoat. "If you're not looking for a quick nob, you're dressed wrong, friend."

Fetish gear? This? Suddenly many of his past interactions with Jack made a lot more sense.

"You're telling me that twenty-first century business formal is the fifty-first century's equivalent to studded black leather pants?"

"If I had any idea what you just said, the answer would probably be yes." He'd shown up to work every single day wearing clothing with "Fuck me stupid" writ large on them, at least in the language Jack read, and by Jack's request.

Jack's mouth was learning its way across his jaw, as he scrabbled at the buttons to Ianto's shirt, and honestly, Jack was Jack, across however many centuries and wearing whatever name.

As Ianto fumbled with the waistband to Jack's trousers, he thought that things could be worse.

VVVVV

If he'd had his diary, he could make a list of things to know about the future: All light is ambient from the ceilings. The music is terrible. Jack Harkness or whoever he is has a lot to learn yet about sex. Spongy floors turn out to be beds once you throw the papers on the table to the side, fold up the chairs, and grab blankets from the drawers.

Bathrooms are not easy to locate with a quick visual search. Had he a pen and not just his head, Ianto would have underlined that last line.

Beside him, nested in tangled blankets, Jack made that soft noise in his throat that he often did following sex and preceding sleep, not a moan and not a purr and all contentment that normally warmed Ianto to his toes amidst lazy kisses as his eyelids grew heavy. They'd grown into that, would grow into that, evolving from the quick fucks in Jack's office after hours and the infrequent handjobs down in the Archives on slow days when they'd competed to see who could bring the other off faster. Before Jack had left the first time. Before he'd come back to them changed.

That led to another disturbing thought, one that momentarily distracted Ianto from the demands of his bladder. John Hart was out there, somewhere close, and while Ianto believed despite the evidence that Jack was a good man, he held no such illusions about John. Hart was a killer, and worse, and for all Ianto knew, he lived in this same small room with Jack, would come home at any time.

He sat up.

Jack cracked an eye open. "What?"

"I need a bathroom."

"You want a bath? Use a cloth to clean up." He gestured to one of the drawers, the same where Jack had kept the slick that was drying uncomfortably now on Ianto's chest and legs.

"No. I need … " What was a good word? "A toilet. A water closet."

Jack shook his head in confusion, and Ianto tried to think. Jack wasn't permitted to go to his time period. Maybe he'd been to the past? "A privy."

Jack's eyes lit up. "A private. You have to pee."

"Yes."

"Down the hall, third door." Ianto started to pull on his clothes. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not walking down the hallway in the altogether."

"Why not?"

They stared at each other, centuries between them. Jack had often said nudity was the national uniform everywhere.

"It's not done," Ianto mumbled, breaking first.

"The fetish wear is so much better," Jack said, and lay his head down again as Ianto buttoned his shirt.

Ianto found his way down the hallway and tried the third door. Then he tried the third door on the other side, which opened. He figured out the toilet quickly enough, and used the sink to clean up. The face in the tiny mirror was pale and shocky, the lips swollen in that distinct fashion he'd grown accustomed to since the first time he'd kneeled in front of Jack so long ago.

The sight was enough to stop him cold.

He wasn't thinking straight. He knew that his mind was cloudier around Jack, always had been, and as much as he sometimes enjoyed shutting down his rapid flight of constant thoughts to indulge entirely in animal sensation, this wasn't a good time. If Ianto was trying to preserve his own timeline, his own past, fucking the one person who was sure to recognise him later was a bad decision.

Ianto still had the Retcon. If he could talk Jack into taking him home, or even find a way to bribe Hart (he swallowed nervously, knowing that information would do him no good there), he could make Jack forget they ever met.

He wiped his face again and went back to Jack's room. Jack was already asleep, and Ianto curled next to him after removing his clothes again, taking comfort in Jack's regular breathing, his simple, mortal heartbeat. He could make Jack forget tomorrow. Tonight he just wanted something familiar.

VVVVV

TBC


	2. Intersecting Geodesics Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Title**: Intersecting Geodesics (2/5)

**Title**: Intersecting Geodesics (2/5)

**Author**: **nancybrown**  
**Rating**: R (language, situations, violence)  
**Spoilers**: up through CoE, brief mentions of events from "Pack Animals," "Almost Perfect" and "Lost Souls"  
**Characters**: Ianto, Jack, John, (Eleven and announced companion)  
**Warnings**: Various shades of dub-con, non-descriptive mentions of sex trafficking, character death. I am operating under the assumption that John Hart is Captain Bad Touch, and so should you for the duration of this story.  
**Wordcount**: 36,000 overall, 9500 this section  
**Betas**: Deepest thanks go out to **51stcenturyfox** and **amilyn** for the Britpicking, beta work, and all those other little details that made this story stronger; anything that's still misplaced, misspelled, misplotted or just plain missing is my fault  
**Disclaimer**: Not my characters, not my show. If they'd catch a clue and shut up in my head, we'd all be happier.  
**Summary**: Stuck in the wrong time with a Jack who hasn't met him yet, all Ianto really wants is a way home.

VVVVV  
Chapter 2  
VVVVV

Jack was shoving his shoulder, and Ianto mumbled, "Gwen won't be here for an hour."

"Who is Gwen?"

Ianto's eyes came open, and the sky was still dark outside the window. Jack sat back on his haunches, still nude but giving a definite impression of having showered. Not his Jack. Not his time. Fuck.

"Someone I knew once." He sat up. "Is it morning?"

"Close enough. I have to get to the Agency." Jack didn't make a move, continued watching him until Ianto felt like crawling deep under the blanket to hide from the stare. "You were going to give me information this morning."

"I didn't say that."

"If you don't, I'm taking you with me to the Agency and they can deal with you like any other runaway fuge." Jack smirked. "They've got a new memory probe I've been dying to try, and they won't mind as long as they can still use you to herd sheep when I'm finished."

"It was the day your father died when Gray was taken. The enemy, they killed almost everyone. Your mother wept over his body. She blamed you for losing Gray."

"Shut up."

"You asked."

"I want to know where Gray is now." Jack's fingers dug painfully into Ianto's arms. His eyes were dangerous.

"I can't tell you that. I can tell you who finds him, and when. But I'm not going to, not yet." He knew he should be afraid. He met Jack's eyes and waited.

"I can't take you back to your time."

"Then I need you to help me survive in yours." At least until Ianto could find the Doctor, until he could work out a plan, Jack was his best and only hope. "I will tell you what I can, when I can. I promise."

"Fine," Jack said, and let go. "I won't turn you in. Not yet. I'll feed you today, but you're not my responsibility. You want to stay here, you pay, one way or another."

"Understood." He had about five pounds, left over from a wallet he'd lifted. Worthless, now.

"I need to go." He shrugged into his clothes, as Ianto put his own back on. They were stale, and advertised sex, and he'd died in them, but he had nothing else. "There's food in that shelf." Jack showed him which one, did not explain anything. "Stay here. You can go down to the private, but if you go any further, you won't find your way back and I'm not going to look for you."

"All right."

Jack left him there without another word. Ianto watched out the window, but if it overlooked the way he'd gone, Ianto could not tell.

He pulled out the table and chairs from the wall, then looked in the food drawer. He couldn't identify any of the food products in the cool space, but he was starving and his head was starting to pound from caffeine withdrawal. He selected a package at random, opened it, and found dry flakes that smelled of spices. He licked a bit off his finger, and wondered if he should reconstitute whatever it was with some water, if there was a place to warm it, if it was in fact food and not a misplaced cleaning supply. Water made it soupy, and he ended up drinking from a bowl he'd found on another shelf, like he would milk from his morning cereal.

The private did have what appeared to be bathing facilities, but their operation was beyond him. He found flannels in the drawer with Jack's sex equipment. (One of the drawers. There appeared to be four with varying objects that looked like something Jack would use.) A sponge bath wasn't his first choice, but he'd be clean. There was nothing to be done about the clothes unless he wanted to try some of Jack's, and the pair of them never had been the same size.

Having nothing else to do, he tidied the room. He folded and put away the clothes, the blankets, the accessories, learning the differences between "food" and "sex toy" (and later discovering in two cases he'd still confused them). He arranged the papers on the table, trying to suss out anything from them and coming up blank. The books he stacked neatly, again trying and failing to make the least sense of what they said.

He tried the mobile, not expecting it to work, not surprised when it didn't.

He needed a plan. Lists were his friends, dividing up his very often mad days into pieces he could digest, both mentally and otherwise. Jack might be angry with him for using one of his written sheets for taking notes, but Ianto found a blank page. He lacked a pencil or pen. He set the page down unmarked.

He had shelter, for now. Food was settled for the day, though Jack had indicated Ianto would have to purchase his own. He needed clothing, or a means to launder what he wore. He needed money, whatever passed for money in this time. He needed a job. These things he kept near the top of his mental list.

He needed to extricate himself from Jack and make sure Jack didn't remember him in any way that would damage the future. Once he had a job and a means of supporting himself, he could slip Jack a few of the pills in his pocket, or what might be simpler, keep the false name, change his appearance a bit - the way his beard was already prickling at his chin suggested that wouldn't be difficult - and assume Jack would simply forget him among a sea of other faces in his murky past.

He needed to avoid John Hart. Not that he thought Hart would recognise him later, but Ianto did not trust Hart at all. He was dangerous.

These were lower on his list, things he had to do but didn't need to make a primary focus.

He had to find a way back. Whatever Jack of the now said, his Jack would need him back in 2009. Jack functioned best when he had someone around to ground him, to remind him he was human. Ianto had been doing his best. He hated to think what would happen in his absence. Gwen loved Jack, would do what she could, but she hadn't made a study of his moods, hadn't spent months experimenting with silences to see which suited Jack best and when, hadn't surrendered all hope of an outside life for the sake of keeping him sane and real. Nor had she done it all for the rewards of being ignored when the Doctor came, and not being told about Jack's family, and never once hearing the words "Thank you," or "I missed you," or "I love you," without them being safely deflected to everyone else in the room.

Anyway. He'd made his choice a long time ago, and knowing that his Jack needed him was enough to make up for the rest.

The Doctor would be able to help him. If he could steal his way back into the Agency, he might be able to help himself. He put "Get home!" at the very top of his mental list, and circled it in red.

By the time Jack returned hours later, Ianto had eaten twice and examined every square centimetre of the room a dozen times. He had constructed a short list of jobs he might be able to undertake while he worked on his main goal, and as they walked together to a restaurant some streets away, he told Jack his ideas.

"I'm good with computers. Our mainframe was made partially of alien tech, so I'm familiar with extraterrestrial systems. I'm pretty good with maths. I had to manage the budget for my last workplace because y- my manager had a habit of overstocking things like chocolates and paperclips and forgetting to submit the expense forms. I could do something with that, accounting or similar. Spreadsheets. I functioned as a personal assistant for years, so I've got a strong background in that area as well."

Jack said nothing, but led him to a table inside. What Jack had indicated was a restaurant when they'd headed over looked more like another pub, dark and smoky. Jack ordered for them both while Ianto looked around, seeing if he could recognise any of the alien species he saw.

After the waiter brought back two drinks, Jack motioned for Ianto to sit still while he talked to the alien bartender. Ianto took a hesitant sip of his own drink, and coughed it back up immediately.

"You drink this?" he asked when Jack returned.

"This?" Jack took a long drink and made a face. "It's shit." Ianto hoped he wasn't being literal. "This place has miserable drinks but the water's worse." He drank more.

"Come here often?"

"When I want to avoid other Agents, yeah. We're far enough into the city that you won't be spotted. Anyway, their glack isn't bad."

The waiter came back with two deep wooden plates. The food appeared to be a mixture of minced meat and vegetables with a binding that could have been rice but probably wasn't, wrapped tightly in a wide brown leaf. Ianto watched Jack pick his up in both hands and take a bite, and he followed suit. The firm texture of the leaf gave way to the warm, savory mixture inside. Not bad at all.

"I like it," he said. "Thanks." He chewed more and said, "This is going to be one of those cases where it's better if I don't ask what's it's made of, isn't it?"

Jack shrugged. "It's made of food."

Ianto set his down when he was half-finished. If he could take the rest back, he'd have something for tomorrow. "I don't suppose there are doggy bags in the future?"

"I don't have a dog."

"Never mind."

Jack polished off his meal and drank his and Ianto's cups dry. "Your shift starts in a couple of minutes. Are you going to finish that?"

"Shift?"

"Work shift. I arranged a job with the owner."

"Oh." He blinked. "Thank you. That was fast."

"You need money, I'm around this place enough to know they won't give you much trouble. I told them you're a half-wit I bought on my last off-world assignment."

"What?"

"It's an easy cover. You'll be cleaning up here. You can mop and scrub, right?"

"I … Yes." He'd cleaned up enough alien blood and worse. This couldn't be too different. "I have other skills, you know." The smile that spread over Jack's face let him know which skills Jack was thinking of, and Ianto glared at him. "I told you, I can do a lot of things. I'm bright enough."

Jack sat back, playing with his empty cup. "Okay, we'll play a game. Something we learned in training."

"All right."

"Who was the smartest person in the year 1000 BC? Take your time."

Ianto searched his memory, could only pull out one name from that period: "Homer. Wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey."

Jack bent his neck. "Not actually who I was going for, but a good example. Homer. A blind poet who spoke ancient Greek. Now, put him on a street in London in your time. What's he going to do?"

Ianto wet his lips. "He was a genius."

"No one knows it's him, and if he tells them, he'll be locked up." Jack leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands. "The Agency helps us prepare for trips into the future, but put me in the eighty-first century without a map, and I'm a blind man speaking Greek. You're going to earn your keep on your knees one way or another, James. You'd make a lot more showing off some of those things you did last night," Ianto stared at him in horror, "but I think you'd be happier for now with a scrub brush."

"That's fine," he said. "Half-wit, though? And you bought me? I thought the future was supposed to be some enlightened place, utopia, and so on."

"Who told you that?"

His Jack had hinted at it, but he always did lie about that sort of thing. "Nobody."

"If I convince the owner you're not very bright, he won't beat you for not understanding the language." Ianto spoke a small bit of Greek, actually, as well as Spanish, Japanese, conversational French, and of course he was fluent in Welsh and English. He'd made the mistake of calling himself a polyglot in front of Owen once, and had been teased for days until Tosh took mercy on them both and quietly explained to Owen what the word meant. He could learn this language, given time, but he supposed not having to understand it right out of the gate would help.

"That'll also explain when you get confused about something. He'll just assume you're mentally retarded. If I tell him I purchased you, he knows I've got a financial stake in your well-being. That means you won't be harassed as much. None of the staff will try to have sex with you without arranging it through me, and they'll keep an eye out so no one else injures you because they know it'll make me angry." He reached a hand under Ianto's bottom and squeezed.

"I feel so much better."

"Want to tell me more about my brother?"

"If I do, you'll leave me here and not come back."

"I might."

"Where's my damned broom?"

Jack took him to the back, where he introduced him to the bar owner, a multi-limbed alien who looked part-squid, part-horse. Ianto could not pronounce his name, and called him Sir. No one on the staff spoke English, so Jack helped him through a few gestures and quickly taught him the words for "Clean up," "Vomit," "Glass," and "Stop."

Ianto expected him to go, but Jack returned to his table, ordered more drinks, and spent the rest of the evening dancing and flirting with the other patrons while Ianto washed up drink containers, scrubbed tables, and kept the tiny dance floor free of debris, spilled food, and yes, alien vomit.

He was groped by strangers twice, until he took off his tie and waistcoat and left them in Jack's care. Jack leaned over so he could hear: "Tomorrow we'll get you some clothing. You'll make more tips in an outfit like that."

"Great."

Jack's eyes were dilated. Ianto had seen him share a powdery … something with a woman not long before, which they'd licked down together before meeting in a deep kiss. Drugs? A snack? Who knew here?

Jack laughed, and soon got into a game of something like poker and something like darts with two other patrons, cheating them out of what looked like a lot of money.

The night wore on, and Ianto could feel his hearing settle into that low roar which indicated mild loss from the loud music. His head hurt, and he was tired. From where he rested a moment, he could see Jack making out on the dance floor with two fairly attractive humanish men. The owner yelled at Ianto, and he went back to work.

While the final patrons were being chased out, Ianto swept up the last broken glass, sopping up the spilled drinks with a sponge. He hurried through a quick, soapy mop of the floor to remove the stickiness; he'd been on top of most of tonight's spills before they'd had a chance to stay, but drinks had sloshed, and he'd missed some whilst dealing with other messes in the back. Ianto himself was sticky and hot, he smelled the smoke on his clothes and in his hair.

"Doe-kat," said the owner. Stop. Ianto set down his mop, and gestured that he needed to rinse. The owner nodded, and let him spread a fine layer of water over the floor, which he swept away, leaving it clean.

Jack snored quietly at his table. Ianto woke him, noting that the remains of his own dinner were long gone but his tie and coat were safe. They wandered home together. By the time they reached the building, Jack was wide awake, and again Ianto noticed how big his pupils were. Definitely drugs.

Barely inside the room, Jack's hands were all over him, grabbing everywhere as Jack licked his neck.

"Don't," Ianto said. "I need a shower. I'm filthy."

"I'll make you filthier."

Ianto considered pushing him away, and then didn't, preferring to let Jack undress him, to work his own hands over the places on Jack's body that he knew his Jack liked. When Jack grabbed for the lubricant, now stowed neatly away, Ianto pulled the bottle away from him and poured a generous measure on his own hands and fingers. "You're going to like this," he said, and proceeded to show Jack what he could do while his lips stayed busy with Jack's mouth.

After, as they lay panting and sated, Jack lolled his head over. "Where did you learn that?"

"My boyfriend was a very patient teacher."

"Back home?"

"Yeah."

"I'm not going to ask if you miss him."

"Good." He wouldn't know how to answer the question anyway.

Ianto rested another moment, then took Jack's hand. "Come show me how to work the shower, and I'll teach you some more tricks."

"Done. But first I'm going to show you how to use a sonic razor."

VVVVV

The shops Jack dragged him to in the morning were in the same seedy neighbourhood as the pub, and the shopkeepers only opened reluctantly under Jack's insistent rapping on the window shades. Commerce was something that began after a leisurely breakfast on this world, Ianto would learn. But Jack had it in his mind to do something, and with a flash of his credentials, doors were opened and people bowed and scraped to make him happy.

Ianto was less happy. There were no dressing rooms in the future. When he balked at removing his own clothes in the middle of the shop, Jack stopped his complaints by removing them himself.

It's like a tailor's shop, Ianto told himself firmly, and reminded himself that embarrassment was not in fact fatal, as the first of what would be five or six tailors wrapped ribbons around his thighs and calves and chest to measure him. The first was the only one with just two arms. Jack haggled with each in turn, and despite the language barrier, Ianto could nearly follow along:

"My servant," Ianto always translated the word Jack used this way, "he needs better clothes."

"A difficult case. See the odd shape of the legs and torso? Very expensive work."

"Not worth expensive to me. What have you got in 'barely decent'?"

"I'm offended that you think I would sell something barely decent."

"My apologies." Ianto actually did not believe Jack was apologising, merely that he was making the proper face for it. "But we don't need something extravagant. Rags would do."

"Rags? You would step into my shop and ask for rags?"

At this point, Jack would look around dismissively. "The quality here would suggest that was an option."

This would continue for some time, during which exchange, Jack would indicate Ianto himself was worth somewhat less than what the tailor asked, and the tailor would indicate the cloth alone was more valuable than the tailor's own multi-legged larvae. At the end, Jack and Ianto would leave each shop with a single parcel containing clothing that fit Ianto well, and the tailor would be richer.

It was like pantomime, and Ianto would be enjoying the show much more if he'd spent each performance less naked.

Also, while he could appreciate the cut and make of these clothes, being not distantly related to the suits he'd adopted as his private uniform at Torchwood, he couldn't enjoy the thought of clean, new suits. Jack was purchasing them to dress Ianto up like a toy in the hope that customers at the pub would want him.

VVV

_Ianto has located the abandoned Torchwood warehouse, and blesses the old file he happened to see just two days ago before everything went to hell. For now, there is still electricity, and privacy, and he needs both to keep Lisa safe and hidden. He's scavenged what he could from the wreckage, and she's guided him towards the pieces she needs to form a primitive life support unit. It's enough._

_He wants to ask UNIT for help, to ask anyone, but he has already seen them line up the other partially-converted Torchwood employees, has seen the fear and recognition in Bob's eyes from his half-metal face as the guns are lifted, has watched Bob and the rest die. UNIT will not help him save Lisa._

_The lights cannot stay on forever. After the situation settles and the bills no longer are paid, this site will lose power. They need a solution._

_As he checks her vital signs, makes notes in a chart he maintains entirely to keep himself sane, they talk._

_"The Glasgow site won't work," Ianto says. "There's only one employee, and I don't think he has the equipment."_

_"We'll have to go to Cardiff," she agrees. But how to get in? Torchwood Three has severed ties with London, even though their vultures are fighting with UNIT for the scraps of London's corpse._

_"What do we know about them?"_

_Lisa can remember a little. Captain Jack Harkness is a mystery, and Yvonne cannot stand the sight of him. Could not stand. Ianto clamps down on the mindless terror again; now is for saving the living. Harkness. The rumours Lisa knows say he likes pretty men._

_"You're pretty," Lisa says. "If you dressed up a bit, flirted with him, you could do this."_

_Ianto blushes and splutters. "You're … no. That's not … No."_

_"I didn't say you had to shag him. Just … be nice to him." She sighs, and later he will remember her sigh because it is one of the things he can cling to as evidence of her humanity. Later he will go through their moments like this, and sift the pieces of Lisa from the jagged fragments of the Cyberman who murdered her slowly right in front of him. Lisa, the real Lisa, said, "Look, women do this all the time. Dressing a bit nicer, smiling a bit more. It's how you survive."_

_"You never did."_

_"You think so? You know that red blouse, the one you like so much with the cream buttons?" He nods; it will be the last thing of hers that he throws into the incinerator while Jack watches and does not speak or help. "Eddie liked it too."_

_"What?" Eddie was her supervisor. Now he's listed among the missing._

_"He liked the blouse, and I was promoted."_

_He tries to wrap his mind around this. "He promoted you because of your clothes?"_

_"No, you daft sod, he promoted me because I damn well deserved it for the work I'd been doing. But he noticed me because of the blouse." She rests her eyes, weariness across her whole body, and suddenly he will do anything to make her better._

_"All right." His mouth quirks into the first smile he's managed in days. "But what do I wear?" _

VVV

Jack stopped at a street stand to buy them lunch: chilled and crunchy and salty on a base that was bread-like and sour. Ianto carried his packages and tried to eat his food while keeping up with Jack's long strides until Jack took pity on him and sat on the edge of a flowerbed so they could eat.

"I'll drop you by my place, and then I need to go in for a while. Briefing."

"On what?" He was only trying to make conversation, but he was familiar with Jack's sharp "That's classified, dumbass," expression even before it fully formed on his face.

"I'll be back in time to get you to work. After tonight, you ought to be able to find it yourself." Jack watched the pedestrians go by, smiling prettily at a pair of purple-hued women sauntering along with some animal on a leash. Ianto hoped it wasn't sentient.

"I'll do my best." He took a bite of the sandwich, letting the flavours play on his tongue.

"You'd better. You get paid tomorrow, and it's not going to cover even one of these outfits."

Ianto finished chewing his bite. "About that. I'll need to understand the currency here."

Jack shrugged. "Not your problem right now. I'm keeping track of how much you're costing me. Everything you earn goes to my account. I'll let you know if I need more."

Ianto pushed away the sick feeling in his stomach and managed a soft, "Thanks." This Jack owed him nothing, had no reason to view him as anything but a burden and a potential source of information. His Jack had been an expert at compartmentalising sex from any emotional or financial attachment, and Ianto did not expect anything else of this one.

VVVVV

Jack came back to take him to work as promised, and Ianto watched landmarks, made mental notes of the incomprehensible signs, tried to show willing. Still, by the time they arrived at the noisy, smelly place, his new clothes felt constrictive and his heart raced. He could make himself do this, especially after Jack had so clearly laid out the alternative, but as he went into the back, as Sir garbled at him, as Jack found his favourite booth and lounged there like he belonged, Ianto wished for a pair of goddamned ruby slippers.

The noise was a fraction duller tonight. He had yet to learn holidays, weeks, anything that could indicate when they'd expect a crowd of partiers and when only the serious drinkers would show.

Jack was focused more on his drinking tonight, though he had a charming grin for anyone who looked his way, and more than once he made it to the tiny dance floor. When his duties allowed, Ianto watched him, jealous all over again at Jack's complete comfort with his own body, and awash in memory of so many times he'd shared in that confident glow for just long enough.

Sir yelled something, and Ianto went back to mopping under what he thought of as Table Two. At least it was just beer on the floor, or the local equivalent thereof.

When he managed to see Jack again, he was dancing closely with an alien woman, all branches and leaves and sultry eyes. The music had gone slower now, and sinuous. Make-out music, where at home the boys would be trying to feel up their dates while the girls would be imagining themselves as Cinderella, or possibly the other way around and never mind about mixing and matching. Sure enough, Jack's hand had crept around to where, on a human woman, a breast would have provided a perfect resting place for his fingers, and the tree-woman stretched into his touch as though he were the sun.

In the back, the two other evening employees began to quarrel, and Ianto scurried back to wash up the drink containers before they broke them again. Tweedledee (not her real name) was working up a large snit against Tweedledum (same - their species tended towards the overly round, red and white alternating, with hair or some growth on their heads that put Ianto in mind of a propeller beanie, and he could not say either one's name, and the appellation helped him get through the night). Sir called the Tweedles out to wait on the customers while Ianto busied himself with soap and water.

By the time he emerged to clean up the spills that had occurred in his absence, because alien gods forbid either Tweedle pick up a mop, Jack and the tree-woman were nowhere to be seen.

Hours passed, and his back hurt, and he kept reminding himself that he could have been dead, and Jack did not return. The pub closed, and the Tweedles kicked the last drunkards out the door while Ianto, true to prediction, went to his hands and knees to get a particularly vicious stain out from right in front of the bar, and Jack did not return. Sir gathered the last of the day's receipts in a bag and gestured with his keys, and Jack had not returned.

"I don't know where to go," Ianto said, desperate and unable to explain.

Sir gestured more emphatically.

Defeated, Ianto let himself be pulled outside by Tweedledum while Sir locked up and left in a different direction than the one Ianto thought was home.

Night, it was night, and he was wandering the street of an alien city, and panicking right now would be his last mistake ever.

He took a breath, and he looked around. All right. This was the street with the pub. He'd stepped outside before, knew the takeaway shop across the street, knew the sloping rooftop of the home next door where gangling grayish aliens lived in a pack of about two dozen, all piling in and out of the tiny house at all hours. Even now, a blank-eyed alien napped on the front step, an infant sprawled on its chest. Two doors down was the place that could have been a laundry and could have been a brothel; scratch that, Jack would have visited it had it been the latter. They passed it on the way here.

Ianto headed down the street in that direction.

Every time he came to an intersection, he looked first for traffic and second for blue-uniformed guards because he was still worried, and then he searched the signs for the markings he'd tried to memorise. A circle, a squiggle, something like an eye. Four intersections, nothing, and he was feeling the panic come back when he reached the fifth and almost missed the sign.

Okay. Turn here. Which direction?

They'd made a left, so he turned right, and yes, as he made his way down the street, there was one of the shops Jack had taken him to this morning, closed now and vacant-looking. People still wandered the streets, though few and far-between, none of them meeting his eyes.

Two more corners, and there was the odd-looking bench he'd put to memory, so he turned left. As he turned, he made out the outline of Jack's building lit against the sky.

He had no idea how to get inside. No amount of waving his hand across the plate would open the door. Local stalking ordnances aside, he wasn't sure how effective lurking outside the door would be before it got him noticed and arrested.

Waiting would do no good, and yet he continued, walking up and down the street to stay warm, to stay awake. Fifteen minutes later, a man came out the door, and Ianto took the chance to dart inside before it closed.

Now all he had to do was work the lift, have any idea of what storey Jack was on, and find the room in a maze.

Ianto sank down to the ground, and rested his head against one wall. This floor was not designed for sleeping, but at least he was inside. He closed his eyes.

VVVVV

No time at all later, Jack was shaking him roughly awake, yelling at him in the language Ianto didn't know.

"What?" he groused, standing and feeling every painful muscle.

"You're not supposed to sleep here."

"I didn't know where to find you. You left." He failed to keep the hurt out of his voice, but if Jack heard it, he didn't let it show. The lift was going now, and he saw humans, aliens, everything. The future was amazing, and polymorphic, and featured entirely too much sleeping on floors.

"You made it back here and couldn't manage an elevator?"

"Show me, then." Ianto scowled at him, surly and sore.

Jack dragged him to the lift. "Think about where you want to go." The homesickness hit him so hard he almost gasped, and Jack actually slapped him on the back of the head. "No. Try again."

He pictured Jack's flat. Immediately the lift whooshed them up to another floor. The doors all looked alike, but Ianto had started to count them and found it in one go. "That's it?"

"You slept in the … What's the word?"

"Lobby."

"You slept in the lobby because you didn't just step on the pad. Bright."

"So where's Twiggy?" It came out brittle, and was meant to. Jack's confusion did not help the barb. "You went home with someone last night."

"She left a while ago. It's morning." He led Ianto into the flat, where the scattered blankets and pillows smelled of sex and maple syrup.

"I hope you got splinters." He pulled the chair from the wall and sat heavily.

Jack laughed, though his eyes were cold. "Next time, figure out the elevator faster and you can join us."

"Are you working today?"

"Yes. I've got an assignment. You'll see me in two days."

"Do you know where you're going?"

He shrugged. "Past. There's a shipwreck, no one ever found. If it pans out, we can take the whole boat."

"You're going to pull more people out of their lives?"

"No, I'm going to find out if they're worth saving from their deaths."

"How do you judge?"

"I infiltrate. See what they're like, how genetically diverse the group is, if they'll be a good fit."

He remembered Thames House. "Someone infiltrated us."

"Sure. It was an office building, so the population was diverse enough. The agent would have been mostly concerned with how recent death was before extraction."

"So we _were_ dead." He still had trouble comprehending that. Jack had come back from the dead any number of times, said it was like being dragged over broken glass. Ianto had simply fallen numbly into Jack's arms, and woken up three thousand years later.

"For a while. But our process can work on someone who's up to about twelve hours dead. After that, the brain decomposition is too severe for recovery. You were lucky."

"That's a word." He felt his cheek again. "It fixes everything?"

"It can repair simple damage."

"And you just go out and find dead people and take them?"

"Dead people are easier to transport, but we'll take living ones any time we can get them. Stick them all on a planet together, they'll get the idea."

"Breed."

"They're stock, chosen to repopulate a dying universe whenever we need them, dotted around the galaxy like caches of fresh water in a desert." Jack's eyes were distant. "Anyway, that's the idea," he said, coming back with a snap. "The missions I've gotten lately are more political. Save the passengers of this yacht the ambassador's son wrecked when he was drinking. Start a war over here. Go to that world, but we're not saving it because that lineage of humans came from the wrong part of the Earth."

"Seriously?"

Jack shrugged. "I'll see you."

"I can't open the doors," Ianto said before he was gone. He waved his hand ineffectually.

"Oh." Jack went to the wall and touched it. "Come here." Ianto went to the panel and let Jack scan his hand with a tingle. "Now you can."

"Thanks."

VVVVV

The two days passed. Ianto couldn't judge time yet, and arrived at work insanely early both days. Sir fed him, and Ianto was sure the words "out of your pay" were spoken at him in some dialect.

The clientele mostly left him alone as long as he chose to forgo the ties and waistcoats, which he was happy to do. A few patrons took the opportunity of Jack's absence to shove hands, and bills, into his trousers, but a well-placed mop handle kept either from going further. He squirreled the money away in his otherwise useless wallet, hidden in Jack's room.

Once, while he washed up, he saw a head of bleached-blond hair come in, and he hid in the back until he was sure the coast was clear. Two things: first, as he listened, the voice was clearly Hart's, and second, Hart started out speaking English and then switched. Unlike Jack, English was John's first language. Ianto really wanted to kill him now and save them all a lot of grief later. The timeline fracture might be irreparable, but it might not be. He treated himself to various daydreams about shooting Hart, strangling him, pushing him off tall buildings, and the like, while the drudgery of his job faded into the background.

He tried his mobile three times a day. The last time he tried was at work, out behind the pub where they took the garbage, pointing the phone to the sky. The battery gave out.

When he woke on the third morning, really the middle of the night, Jack was in the room crouched over him, naked and wanting. Too tired to argue or even to care, Ianto let Jack fuck him while he squeezed the useless phone until his fingers cramped.

VVVVV

"Tell me about your trip."

"No."

Later, after significantly more alcohol than Ianto thought Jack's liver ought to be able to tolerate, Jack said, "They were sex workers. Women." He snorted. "Girls. I don't think any of them was older than seventeen. Someone bought a bunch of kids from their parents or their pimps, and was shipping the lot to work somewhere else when the storm hit. Fifty-two of them, and seven crew members."

"What did you do?"

"I talked to them." Jack's face had always been a study in broken pieces. "The youngest was nine."

"Shit."

"It would have been a good catch. We can get shipwrecks with men all the time. Sailors. Women are harder to locate that way. Get two stock sets like that, and there's your first colony." The Agency planted five to six small colonies per world, close enough to interact when they were ready, far enough to avoid a wipeout in case of disease or unforeseen local disaster.

"'Would have?'"

"History says the ship was lost at sea. History wins."

"Why? You could have saved them."

"No. I could have taken fifty little girls and let them be put on an isolated planet with a pack of lonely men who've just been told their duty to the galaxy is to breed." Jack ordered another drink, and Tweedledee brought it out.

"You could have taken them someplace else, then. You didn't have to leave them to drown."

"Lega thought that. She was a Time Agent. I knew her. She was sent to investigate a slaver ship. She wanted to save them, not force them into a different kind of slavery. She was found out and fired." He drank.

"Does the Time Agency ever do anything useful?"

"Preserve humanity from extinction." He finished the rest in one swallow. "You know something, James? I've done slave ship assignments. Between you and me, I don't think humanity's worth it."

Jack left early that night, but he was sleeping alone when Ianto made it home, and he curled unhappily against Ianto's back, lost in bad dreams.

VVVVV

"Hey, Gorgeous!" The too-familiar voice shook Ianto from his daydream. "Miss me?" The clothes were different, but the face, the swagger and the mad affection were all Hart as he slid into Jack's booth.

"Never," said Jack, and put paid to the lie by practically eating John's face. Ianto looked away, looked at his broom, prayed the shadows in the bar would hide the flush on his cheeks.

When Jack finally came up for air, he kept one hand firmly on John's arse. "Where'd you go this time?"

"520,900. Tsunami on Estana Prime. Got the stock set up to go, was running just a small sideline, keep my hand in, hardly worth mentioning, and then You Know Who found out."

Jack laughed. "Are you for real?"

"Week in jail. That bastard has it in for me."

"Only a week?" Ianto didn't mean to say it out loud.

John's head turned, and Ianto was ready for the size-up and the predatory gleam. "And you are?"

Jack said, "That's mine. I found him a few trips ago and the price could not be  
beat."

"You bought me a present?"

Hot words came to Ianto's lips, but Jack said, "He's not your type."

"I'll judge that for myself."

"Do it later. So, jail?"

"I was lucky. The penalty is usually death. The squid himself stepped in."

"He does have it in for you."

"Squid?"

Ianto regretted opening his mouth as John's attention returned. "There's this alien, shows up in history about fifty thousand years from now. Pain in the arse. Has a whole thing against the Time Agency, always messes with us. Five billion years of history, step one foot into any of his territory, Face of Boe smacks you down."

"He's got a vendetta against Georgn," said Jack. "I thought they stopped sending you forward because of all the hassle."

"They did, but my name came up when Piut got fired."

Unexpectedly, they broke from their embrace. Jack took a long swig from his glass, and John took it from him to drink more.

"One of these days, I'm taking a hammer with me and cracking his fish tank open just to watch."

"Sure you are," said Jack agreeably. He nodded at Ianto. "Face is just that: a big head in a jar. Superrich, older than dirt, and loves to fuck with Georgn."

"Your archenemy is a head in a jar?" Ianto cracked a smile. "Who puts him," he gestured at John, "in jail?" Jack nodded. "I like him already."

"Got to be a gangster," John said. "All that money, came out of nowhere, knows every con in the book. Old enough to have written some of the book."

"Bastard," said Jack.

"I was thinking, let's leave this dump. I found some Glory. You and me, we can have it gone by morning."

"I haven't done Glory in months."

"Then I'll do the whole bag. Come on, you're wearing too much."

"Let's go to yours."

"Yours is bigger."

"Damn right," Jack said, grinding against him. John growled and Jack pulled him in for another kiss.

Ianto heard a crash; another dropped glass. He should go clean up, but his feet rooted to the floor, watching them. Sir shouted and that broke the spell. By the time he'd swept up the mess, they were gone.

VVVVV

He could hear them from the other side of the door. The walls were thinner than he'd anticipated, and he wondered how many of Jack's neighbours had listened in on their own noisy shenanigans, as Gwen would say.

Ianto rested outside the flat, not wanting to go in, less out of fear of intrusion and more out of worry of what John and Jack would suggest. "Georgn," he reminded himself, and while Jack had said his name was "Jaxon," he seemed to be answering to something closer to "Jarryn" or "Jarron." Names were something to steal and to discard. Of course since everyone against all likelihood was calling Ianto "James Bond," he shouldn't judge.

He'd never wanted to know what John Hart's sex noises were like.

When they finally quieted, Ianto let himself inside, grateful that the blankets covered John's slumbering body. He grabbed another blanket and found a place over by the window. Odours permeated the room, and he'd been listening to them rut for ages, and having such a painful hard-on was just not fair.

Morning came, leisurely after such a long night, and he woke to the alternately attractive and horrifying sights of Jack and John sprawled nude on the floor picking over breakfast. Ianto had slept in his clothes from work, and smelled it. He grabbed another outfit without a word and went to shower.

They were still eating and still naked when he returned, although he'd lingered under the water extra long just in case. Jack's lips had that swollen look about them of fresh sex, and the room reeked, so they'd apparently been occupied by more than food.

"Now," John said, "I have to ask. You complain when I bring toys home."

"You break your toys." Jack popped a bit of fruit into his mouth. Ianto wondered where he'd found it. Chewing, Jack continued, "Anyway, this one's got information. I want to keep him where I can see him."

Ianto took a few pieces of the fruit, and sat beside Jack to eat. The view was worse but the company was better.

John said, "He talked last night."

"I don't have anything to say to you."

"Be nice," Jack admonished. "Georgn, this is James. He has intel about Gray."

John's eyes widened. "Really?" A smile played on his lips. "I'll get the ropes, you get the knives. We'll have him talking in ten clickits."

"Later." Then Jack said something in the planet's language, and John laughed while Jack touched Ianto's shoulder. The gesture wasn't nearly as comforting as it would have been yesterday.

Ianto said, "I've already said I'll tell you everything."

"You will."

"A little simple torture will make this go much faster," said John. "Then you can sell him off to pick up some quick cash and we can be on our way to find your brother by tomorrow."

The hand on his shoulder squeezed. Ianto forced himself to relax. If Jack sided with John, he had no hope of fighting them both.

"We'll go with my plan for now," Jack said. "And when it's time, I'll go alone. Gray is my responsibility."

John was chastened, but only a little. He picked at his food. "I just want to help you." The pout was familiar.

Ianto said, "I take it the two of you have already spent your two week holiday together? The one that went a bit long?"

John grinned, but Jack didn't.

"That reminds me," John said. "Did you hear about Klaust?"

"What about him?"

"Got found with three fuge girls locked up at his place. Nasty business."

"I always wondered about him."

"Everyone wondered about him."

Ianto said, "What's a fuge?"

"Temporal refugee," said Jack. "Another name for the stock we acquire." His eyes held a warning, and he said, "The Agency has strict rules about the treatment of fuges."

"Which everyone breaks," John said. "Half of them are so grateful that you saved them, they'll nob you voluntarily." Ianto didn't ask about the other half. He suddenly wondered what had become of Charlotte and the others. "As long as no one ends up pregnant, the Agency doesn't care."

"But we don't keep them locked up," said Jack. "That's pasten."

John shrugged again. Ianto really wished he'd put on some trousers. "Klaust is getting fired later today. We could go watch."

Jack flinched. "No thanks."

"He ought to be fired," Ianto said. "You don't treat people that way."

"Listen to the bloodthirsty toy," John said.

Ianto turned to Jack, lost again. Jack said, "James doesn't understand." He started to rip a piece of food into small bits. "When a Time Agent is fired, it means he's put in front of a firing squad."

"So, no severance package, then?" Ianto said weakly.

"That's a good one, mate," said John. "Yes, the package gets severed."

Jack had talked about getting fired, about his friends getting fired. Taking Ianto back to 2009 would get him fired. Keeping him as a prisoner would get him fired, although apparently a blind eye could be turned to keeping him as an indentured servant and/or sexual plaything.

Ianto really hated the future.

VVVVV

After John had finally left and Ianto had turned to the task of straightening up, Jack said, "I never told you about that."

"About what?"

"The five years Georgn and I were trapped in that time loop."

He shrugged, folding a blanket. "I told you we cross paths."

"Apparently I don't keep my mouth shut when we do."

"No. Keeping your mouth shut is in fact one of the things you are infamous for not doing." Not that Jack volunteered information like, "I'm immortal and can't die," or "I've got a grown daughter and a grandson," unless he had to. For someone who kept a running commentary going as much as Jack did, he often never said a thing.

Jack watched him work for a while. "Georgn's very … possessive. That trip was half a year ago. We haven't officially worked together since. But if I snap my fingers," he demonstrated, "he comes running. It's useful."

"Officially?"

"Hm?"

"You haven't worked with him officially. Unofficially?"

Jack's smile curled into a lazy grin. "He's a good partner. We've got a few games we work when things are dull."

"I don't want to know." His imagination had filled in too many gaps from the audio track last night.

"Two-man shows are the best. I'm good at playing the part of the policeman, or the jeweler, or that one time I was the priest."

Ianto flushed. They'd only played "the priest and the altar boy" the once, and they'd stopped halfway through when Ianto had blurted out their safe word ("Weevil! Fuck, Jack. Weevil.") before he was completely freaked out.

"Georgn's better at the conman who almost got away, or the broke traveller with nothing but his poor mother's ring to his name."

"I don't think I know that game."

"That one's a classic. Georgn checks into a hotel, or gets a meal, or something. When it's time to pay, he's lost his money, left it back at home or dropped it in his room. He begs the clerk to let him go look, and hands over a jeweled ring that belonged to his mother as a show of good faith. Then after he runs off to get his money, I, another patron of whatever establishment this is, introduce myself as a merchant who specialises in the gem trade, and I take my time with the ring, finally telling the clerk it's worth a fortune, and that I know a buyer who'll pay thousands for it. I leave my contact information, and hurry out because I have a ship to catch or a meeting to attend. When Georgn comes back with his money, the clerk offers to buy the ring from him, for a nice sum. Georgn cries about his mum, explains it's all he has left to remember her by, and so on, until the sum is much nicer."

Not a sex game, then. A con. "What happens when the clerk gives him back the ring and hands him your contact info?"

"Don't know. It hasn't happened yet." He grinned like a wolf. "After expenses, we tend to pull in at least a couple of hundred each on that one."

He looked like he expected a compliment, but something had been bothering Ianto for a while. His Jack had always been generous with his own cash, while this one accounted for every single credit Ianto owed him. "What do you do with all the money?"

"Use it. Georgn buys whatever concoction he thinks will make him stop thinking about all the people we've killed. I look for Gray."

"I don't understand."

"I can't go back to the day he vanished. I'm blocked from travelling any time during my natural lifespan plus some buffer time. I can go before I was born, and I can go anywhere after one hundred years from now. They don't tell you that when you enlist. They make suggestions, not quite promises, about making the past a better place and saving the future. But you can't change your own life. You can't save the people you love. That's the first lesson they teach." His eyes flickered. "Georgn lost his whole family. Slaughtered in front of him when he was a kid. He joined for the same lies I did."

"And Gray?"

"Money buys information. It bribes officials who keep the records of that period of history. It pays people to look the other way when I'm looking through the places I can search. It purchases intel on the aliens who raided Boeshane." He dropped his gaze to the mess he'd made on the table, the shredded fruit covering his sticky hands. "And it buys enough alcohol and everything else so I can forget when none of those things work."

All this, and a wait that would last over a century, for someone who murdered dozens of people because he was angry Jack didn't get there sooner. Tosh's face still haunted his dreams.

If he told Jack everything he knew, right now, he still wouldn't find Gray. Maybe he'd be strong enough to stop John from doing it, though, and Tosh and Owen would live, but Ianto doubted it. This Jack would do anything for his brother, and even his Jack couldn't kill him in the end, had left it for Gwen and Ianto to arrange a short-circuit in the stasis chamber for the sake of their silent agreement that Gray would never hurt anyone again.

Ianto could not tell this Jack about that, nor how a sensation of freedom had flooded him as he'd watched the numbers on Gray's vitals all drift down to zeroes. Jack had killed the one monster Ianto never could, and he'd been grateful to finally repay that gift.

VVVVV

Jack was always gone for two to three days for missions, even though they often took him much longer to accomplish. The Agency arranged for him to come back shortly but definitely after he'd left to avoid timeline contamination. Ianto accustomed himself to Jack's absences, just as he had grown used to his presence.

Work at the pub was monotonous but bearable. Ianto began picking up on more words and phrases. He couldn't take meal or drink orders yet, but he could summon one of the Tweedles to do it instead.

The next time Jack went on a mission, John came to the pub alone. After a few hours of ingesting things that shouldn't be legal, he ducked into the back while Ianto was washing up.

Hands were suddenly on his, and his face was pressed against the greasy wall. "You know," said John, breath crystallising in the air from the booze and more, "Jarron and I share everything." Ianto fought to stay calm, feeling the hard bulge against his arse, mentally counting how many weapons he knew John had on his person.

Both of his hands were shoved together into one grip, and John's free hand went wandering. Really, the destination wasn't hard to guess.

"That's not what he said," Ianto said, biting down on his fear.

"What?"

"Jarron. He doesn't like you that way."

"Excuse me?" John's body grinded against him.

"Oh, he'll use you for the sex. But he's not that into you. He doesn't love you. He laughs at you when you're not there. Calls you his dog."

"Says the toy with the leash."

"Says the man Jarron confides in. That isn't you anymore, is it?"

John spun him around, and Ianto's head cracked sharply on the wall. "You don't know anything." John gripped Ianto's arms so tightly that the bruises lingered for days.

"I know what you know. The second he finds his brother, he's leaving the Agency far behind, and you won't even be a fond memory." He was grasping, but the words seemed to find their intended target.

At that moment, Sir came into the back and gesticulated at John, who dropped Ianto's arms and held up his hands in a "Who me?" fashion.

John's hurt expression contorted into a grin. "I can't wait until Jarron puts you up for sale. I'll buy you myself, just for the enjoyment of cutting you apart, one bit at a time. Kisses."

It wasn't the last time he saw John there, but it was the last time he went anywhere without watching his exits more carefully. Jack came home the next day, happier than usual after having secured a piece of transport technology from a species whose name Ianto couldn't pronounce even after several tries. Jack laughed at his attempts, was only slightly less amused when Ianto told him about John's attentions.

"I'll talk to him," he said, and that was all.

VVVVV


	3. Intersecting Geodesics Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Title**: Intersecting Geodesics (3/5)

**Title**: Intersecting Geodesics (3/5)

**Author**: **nancybrown**  
**Rating**: R (language, situations, violence)  
**Spoilers**: up through CoE, brief mentions of events from "Pack Animals," "Almost Perfect" and "Lost Souls"  
**Characters**: Ianto, Jack, John, (Eleven and announced companion)  
**Warnings**: Various shades of dub-con, non-descriptive mentions of sex trafficking, character death. I am operating under the assumption that John Hart is Captain Bad Touch, and so should you for the duration of this story.  
**Wordcount**: 36,000 overall, 6700 this section  
**Betas**: Deepest thanks go out to **51stcenturyfox** and **amilyn** for the Britpicking, beta work, and all those other little details that made this story stronger; anything that's still misplaced, misspelled, misplotted or just plain missing is my fault  
**Disclaimer**: Not my characters, not my show. If they'd catch a clue and shut up in my head, we'd all be happier.  
**Summary**: Stuck in the wrong time with a Jack who hasn't met him yet, all Ianto really wants is a way home.

VVVVV  
Chapter 3  
VVVVV

"Come with me," Jack said one day, as he came home early from the Agency.

"What?" Ianto had been busy preparing some lunch, forgot it entirely in the wake of Jack's unexpected return.

"I'm going on a quick mission, five hundred years from now. Asteroid's going to wipe out a planet. Come with me to check it out."

"I'm not allowed, am I?"

"Strictly speaking, no. Are you going to tell?" That teasing smirk, and Ianto had fallen for it enough times not to bother cursing himself when he did so again. Jack already had clothes for him to change into.

They packed the few items they needed in a rucksack which Jack made Ianto carry, and then Jack held onto him, made him touch the wrist strap, as he activated his Vortex Manipulator.

Several painful and nauseating seconds later, they staggered onto a secluded beach at sunset. Once Ianto finished retching, found his legs, he caught his breath and appreciated the beauty. Golden sands nearly surrounded a pool of seawater the perfect blue-green of the Mediterranean. The trees weren't exactly palms, but they smelled sweet on the early evening breeze. He heard bird calls in the distance and nothing else. It was as if this beach, this sunset, was all for the two of them.

"This is your assignment?"

"This is one of the nicer ones. I did the research. Small population, easy to check, perfect location. Thought you might like a vacation."

To Ianto's delight, Jack took the opportunity to strip naked and take a dip in the shallow water at the sand's edge. Ianto paused, still a little unsure even with the emptiness all around them, and then Jack splashed him. He folded his clothes neatly before he waded in to splash Jack back.

Hours later, and more than a bit gritty in places sand wasn't meant to go, Ianto lay back on the still-warm beach, head resting on arms folded behind his head, bare toes brushing Jack's thigh. Jack was singing absently under his breath as he worked with a device he'd brought, and Ianto hummed along though the words were foreign to him. He couldn't see stars from the alien city where they lived, could only just make out the moons on good nights. Only now, as his brain failed to find a single constellation he knew, did he sense how very far from home he was. Aliens he could comprehend, but even the stars were different here.

Jack's face glowed in the light of the equipment. "The settlement isn't far, just further inland by the fresh water. I figure we can rest here a little longer, then walk in the night to get there before morning."

"When is the asteroid coming?"

"Six days. More than enough time."

"I can't believe all this will be gone in less than a week."

"The planet will survive. Most of the animal species will be wiped out, including the humans, and they barely got here." At Ianto's expression, he said, "It's already a colony world. Their ancestors arrived about two hundred years ago."

"Why don't they leave?"

"First, colony ships were designed to fly one way. Your ship is your transport, and then it converts to living quarters and a power plant upon arrival. Second, while they do have occasional off-world contact, it's not close enough to arrange escape for their entire population in time. Third, they don't know it's coming."

"And we're not going to tell them."

"We might. As soon as we know they're going to be useful."

They rinsed sand off each other and dressed. Jack was all business now, which Ianto took in with only a little regret. For a short while, it had felt like what he'd quietly wanted from old times.

Back home, Ianto had idly daydreamed about taking a few days with Jack someplace nice, where they could relax and not think about aliens or the Rift or Weevils or anything except what ornaments would come on the sticks with the next round of cocktails. Given a long enough stay, they might have even left their room. Instead, they'd spent too much time dancing around calling what they had a relationship. After Gray came and changed everything, there had only been the three of them and no chance for a getaway, romantic or otherwise. The closest they'd come was the trip to see Martha in Switzerland, but Gwen had been in the room right next door, and Ianto had been recovering from his run-in with the "ghosts," and Jack had been distant, and perhaps holidays were just a bad idea for them anyway.

But he still sighed a little as he shouldered the rucksack and followed Jack into the forest.

VVVVV

The villagers rose early, were already moving about when Jack and Ianto arrived at the crack of dawn. Jack introduced them both as travellers come from another island in the archipelago. Someone who seemed to be an official greeted them kindly, and Jack let him show them around the village, making noises about the impressive construction of the tiny wooden houses. As they walked, Ianto could just make out tilled fields growing in neat green lines beyond the far border. This wasn't a large village.

"Ah, the quamous patch," said the official, noticing Ianto's gaze. "We're expecting a good crop this year. Do they grow good quamous in your village?"

"We're always on the lookout for better," Jack said with a grin, and the official laughed.

"They speak English," Ianto marveled, when he had a private moment with Jack.

"No, they're being translated by this," Jack said, pointing to his wrist strap.

"Of course you've brought trade with you," said the official, cutting in, and Jack dropped his wrist strap as if it meant nothing.

"Of course." In the rucksack, he found intricate wooden shapes that fit easily into a man's hand. "You're familiar with these?"

The official's eyes lit up. "These will be perfect." He took one of the shapes, a sphere with carvings etched in the smooth surface, inspecting it gleefully before placing it back in Jack's hand. "Let me find you a place to stay."

"Thank you," Jack said.

They were led to a small house near the center of the village. The walls were thin and windowless, the floor was bare earth. A few broken pieces of furniture - a table with only three legs, rickety chairs, dusty wooden bowls piled on the ground - were all the room held, and the building was just the one room. Light streamed in from the roof, holes a touch too regular to be there by accident. Jack smiled as if they'd been taken to the finest suite at the Ritz-Carlton.

"I apologise for the sparse quarters," said the official, "but we don't often have guests. This is a storage room. I'll have someone bring beds shortly. You will of course eat with my family. Our morning fast has already broken, but you may join us for our midday meal."

"That would be lovely. Here," he said, and took out the sphere. "Allow me to thank you for your hospitality."

"Your generosity is appreciated. I will send my daughter to help you settle."

After he had left them there, Jack sat on the floor rather than a chair while Ianto poked around the room. "It's very … Spartan," he said, for something to say.

"It's a storage room. He's smart. Some people will toss me in the grain silo or in the barn. Never put a stranger in with your food." He pulled out his first scanner. "I'm getting plenty of electronic readings. Did you notice the solar threads in the linings of the buildings?" Ianto shook his head. "Simple tech, but effective, rates them as a Level Four Electronic society. Power right from the sun. Probably runs all their equipment."

"I didn't see any equipment."

"You didn't look. Their fields were being maintained by androids. Thought you would have noticed those at least."

"I was distracted by thoughts of good quamous."

"Never tasted it. The record says it's similar to bimpa fruit."

"That's not helpful."

"Not for you."

There was a light tap on the door, and Jack shoved his scanner back into the rucksack. A woman waited outside, dressed in the same loose clothing that Jack and Ianto wore, her long dark hair pulled back from a kind face.

"I am Kamb. My father said you needed help getting settled."

Jack was instantly on his feet, all charm as he took her hand. "Jix. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Her eyes glowed at the attention, and Ianto wondered if they could harness Jack's sexual magnetism to power a small city somewhere. He also wondered if sleeping with the official's daughter was going to land Jack, and any erstwhile companion he'd brought with him, in jail. This was followed by the thought that Jack had paid the man, who'd immediately suggested his daughter join them, so it was possible she'd been sent here for that very purpose. The way Jack was looking at Kamb, not touching her but practically living in her personal space with no objection from her, wasn't helping Ianto discard that last possibility.

And then he heard the children.

A boy and a girl, maybe eight and ten years old, piled into the room behind her. "Grandfather said there were strangers!" exclaimed the girl.

"Manners," Kamb said. "Jix, these are my children. Kie, Loren, please meet Jix and … " she paused, which Jack filled in smoothly, "My friend Jaym."

"Hello!" said the girl, while the boy stayed behind her, clearly excited and also clearly shy. Ianto smiled at them.

"Where are the twins?" Kamb said.

"Klay has them," said the girl. Kie. She moved past Kamb into the room and started examining the rucksack.

Moments later, an older girl, just as lovely as her mother, came to the doorway with two toddlers of indeterminate sex. "It is true," said Klay.

"Told you," Kie said, while Jack moved the rucksack away from her.

Kamb said, "Girls, tell your father to help you find beds for our guests." She took the toddlers' hands from her daughter's grasp. "Go on." Once they were gone, she turned back to Jack. "They are excited. Forgive them."

"They're children," Jack said. "There's nothing to forgive."

VVVVV

The midday meal was some kind of white fish and a tuber vegetable, both cooked over an electric stove by Kamb's husband Lan. Jack praised the food, their home (which was lit by skylights, and also had an earth floor, but was better furnished than Jack's flat back home and also had more books), and the loveliness of the village itself. He devoured his meal and asked for seconds, while Ianto found his own portion satisfying but not spectacular. Add some butter, a match on in the background, and his father's shouts at the telly, and it'd be like any dinner he could remember from his childhood.

Jack asked questions about the village. How long had they been there? (As long as they could remember.) How many people lived there? (Several dozens, and more in the two villages over the next rise.) Who was in charge? (Kamb's father, but mainly because he was willing to do the fiddly paperwork of the job, and no one listened to him unless they wanted to.)

After the meal and the questions, which Jack always kept pitched as "amazed traveller" vein rather than "auditor," they were allowed to wander. Ianto kept close to Jack so as not to lose the use of the translator, and Loren, who'd finally warmed to them after Jack let out a scandalous belch over lunch, called Ianto Jack's shadow and trailed after them.

"Better a shadow than a shade," Jack said, and this was apparently very funny in the local language.

They talked to people, or more precisely, Jack did. Twice he offered up gifts of the wooden carvings, both times to elderly members of the village. As word spread, they gathered more young followers, who were astonished when Jack started juggling random items as they stopped to chat.

No wonder Jack and John ran cons on these planets. The way he had the populace entranced, he could rob them blind and naked, and they'd probably thank him for the show.

Supper was a cold return of the midday meal, and Jack was even more enthusiastic about it, earning him a special place in Lan's heart, and Lan did not miss the opportunity to demonstrate to his children what proper appreciation meant. Kamb's father joined them for the meal, and appeared to live there with them. The adults talked long into the warm evening, as the little children and even the big children were eventually put to bed. Kamb led Jack and Ianto back through the dimly-lit street to their room.

"The beds are not the best," Kamb said by way of apology. "But they should suit you."

"Thank you for all your hospitality," Jack said, and he pressed another carving upon her until she accepted it with murmured thanks.

When she was gone and the door closed, Jack went back to his scanner as though the hours hadn't passed. Ianto sat on one of the narrow beds, happy not to be at work this evening, happy to be with Jack, happy to be among these people, on this world. He couldn't even find room for wistfulness tonight about being so far away from home.

After Jack finished whatever he was doing, he glanced up at Ianto. "So are you going to sit there all night or are you going to push those beds together already?"

He only fell through the gap between them once.

The next day was much like the first, as Jack continued to talk to the villagers. The people on this world had no crime, no wars, memories of old famines but nothing recent. Most families had three or four children apiece, although Ianto noticed the sad flash across one woman's face and asked her gently about it.

"They die," she said. "We don't give them names before their third birthdays. When they live, they get a name." Her sadness was for a baby she'd lost weeks ago. Ianto offered his sympathies.

Jack listened, and then questioned Kie about her siblings. Three others had died in infancy, she told him as she might tell him about clouds. The twins had no names yet, but would get them soon.

"That doesn't seem to fit," Ianto said when they were alone. "You're right, they have plenty of technology. That doctor you talked to this morning is better educated than the last one I saw in A&amp;E." Jack looked confused. "Never mind."

"It's probably nothing," Jack said, and he put on a big smile for the kids who'd caught up with them.

In the late afternoon, Lan went to fix something special for supper. Jack invited Kamb politely back to their room.

Ianto gave him a worried look. Jack held up his hand. Wordlessly, he said, "I'm working here."

Wordlessly, Ianto shot back, "That's what I'm afraid of."

Nevertheless, Kamb went with them, allowed Jack to sit her in one of the chairs and run his scanner over her, a different one from what he had been using yesterday. "This might tickle," he said, and he gave her a smile that made her giggle, just a little.

"I'll tell you if it does. Then you can do it again."

He ran the scanner over her, careful not to touch her skin. A frown crossed Jack's face.

"What is it?"

"Genetic profile." He ran his scanner over Kamb again. "I need more samples.  
Kamb, please bring me someone who isn't a relative of yours."

She nodded, returning several minutes later with a young man who'd followed them around for a while that afternoon. Jack refused to respond to Ianto's questions while they waited, and then he was too busy. He scanned the boy twice.

"All right," he said too brightly. "Thank you. Jaym and I will freshen up and join you for supper." Kamb shook her head, smiling at their strange customs, and took the boy out.

"Tell me."

"They're all related; I can tell already. Genetic correlation is too high to make them viable candidates for colonisation. Small population, it's always a risk."

Ianto said, "They'll have to be split up."

"Nope," Jack said. "They're not going anywhere."

His words sunk in.

"But they'll be annihilated. That asteroid hits in a few days."

"Exactly. You and I need to get out of here." Jack started to make adjustments on his wrist strap.

"You can't just leave them to die."

"Better them than me." Gone was the kind, generous stranger who had flirted with their hostess and offered gifts to the village elders, and back was the calculating bastard.

Ianto had seen this side of Jack before, but he'd always set it aside, apart. Jack wasn't really that selfish. He'd just had a bad day. He had knowledge of something else that he wasn't sharing. He was pretending. He was testing them.

He was leaving.

Ianto's heart fell. "You can't."

"This is my job. I identify groups we can use and groups we can't. That's the point. We can't use these people. They'll screw up the gene pool we're trying to protect."

"What about the next village?"

"No good. The population won't be any bigger and the genes will be just as limited." Jack tapped his strap once more. "Ready to go?"

"No." He tried reason. "There are over six hundred people on this planet."

"I noticed. They would have made a perfect acquisition."

"You're going to kill them all."

"No," Jack said, and his voice was ice. "That asteroid is going to kill them. It happens. It has happened. We're not arguing with history. It's not worth it."

"Save a handful of them, then. Save Kamb's family. That's only eight people."

"Did you not get the point of the 'close relatives' issue? They've got time bombs lurking in their gene code. I saw them. That infant mortality rate you were so concerned about? Probably from inherited disorders. We're not dropping a family in the middle of a bottleneck to spread those around. Extinction events are bad enough as it is."

"Then send them all someplace else, someplace safe. Don't leave them here to die."

"The Agency controls the mass-transporting tech. I can barely take you." That wasn't a no. Ianto knew the signs of Jack fishing for a reason to give in without wanting to appear that he was relenting. He'd done it plenty of times with Gwen.

"Georgn is the one who finds Gray."

Jack went still. "Say that again."

"In your personal timeline, a long time from now, Georgn is the one who will find him. He's the one who frees Gray from his captors."

"Tell me when."

"For Georgn, it'll be about," he guessed, based on Hart's face, "ten years. He'll be starting to lose his hair."

"And he finds Gray."

Ianto nods. "I think he did it to impress you."

"That's pretty damned impressive." Jack's tongue darted out, touched his upper lip. "Why are you telling me?"

"A trade. Please."

Jack stared at him until Ianto had to look away. Then he walked to the doorway and looked out into the village. Kamb sat in the shade, watching as the twins toddled hand in hand. They'd all be dead in less than a week, and no one would be left to mourn them, only the Agency's records noting they'd ever existed.

"Where would we take them?" Jack asked. He wanted to do this. He just needed a nudge.

"The planet where they were going to send me. We could go a few years after the Thames House survivors arrive. In and out."

"It's a bad genetic mix to put there."

"Not if the rest of the planet is from somewhere else. Which they clearly are. How many are you planning on taking?"

Jack watched outside again. "I think we could carry two. If they were small."

VVVVV

Still reeling from the nausea, Ianto approached the large building at the center of the town. Five years was enough time for the Agency to stop keeping close watch on their charges, for the first batch who would never have made it anyway to die off, for the first children to be born.

The twins bawled, and he tried to soothe them, but they had to keep walking, their tiny feet covered in dust. He opened the door with one hand, holding them both with the other. Quickly, he said to the first person he saw inside, "Is this the colony from London? MI-5 building?" The man nodded, and Ianto thrust the kids at him, more roughly than he intended. "Take care of them."

Then he hurried out without looking behind him, blocking his ears to their cries for their mother and father. History had said its final word on their parents.

"Let's go," Jack said, as Ianto reached him.

VVVVV

His shift started in twenty minutes or so, and Ianto hadn't slept. He ate anyway, and when Jack set a large glass in front of him, Ianto took it gratefully and did not spit much when he tasted it.

"We saved two people," Ianto said, savoring the drink.

"According to you, we murdered three hundred times that many. Drink up." Jack took a deep draught of his drink, while Ianto stared into his and could not finish the food.

VVVVV

Jack did not invite him on another mission, and Ianto didn't ask. Every time Jack told him he'd be gone, Ianto thought of Kie and Loren and Klay, their bodies torn apart by a pressure wave they wouldn't even see coming. He couldn't meet Jack's eyes when he told him goodbye.

Work at the pub continued to be annoying but bearable. He was picking up more and more of the local language, enough to understand Tweedledee and Tweedledum sometimes as they bantered and gossiped about the patrons, enough to take instruction from Sir on how to operate the stove to boil water. Ianto was not permitted to make any of the food in the back, but he could work as sous chef, chopping and prepping for Sir, who was actually quite proud of the restaurant part of the business.

Ianto never saw any of his own pay, had to assume Sir was transferring everything to Jack, but he kept his tips, even swallowing his pride sometimes to swivel his hips just so around the customers he knew would take the opportunity to stick cash in his pockets. This was no more humiliating than the odd game he'd played with Jack once upon a time when Lisa had been hidden in the basement, trapped inside her own body. At least, he could convince himself of that. He had not given up hope of bribing another Time Agent to find passage back to where he belonged, and if that meant a little tarting about, so be it.

More upsetting were the times he came home after a long night to find Jack with someone, sometimes multiple someones. Jack only came to the pub some nights, and spent others in other clubs, possibly the same one where they'd met, and those nights were the ones Ianto tended to find him with a friend.

"You could join in," Jack told him one morning, aware of the annoyed look on Ianto's face.

"I don't want to join in." Ianto took a bite of the bland bread they were having for breakfast. "I want to have a place to sleep where I don't have to climb over naked strangers to get to a pillow." Especially when one of them was John Hart, who spent the night far more often than Ianto liked. Jack had fixated on John again after Ianto's revelation about Gray, which meant more than once Ianto had awakened to John's strong hands and wicked smile and had to shove him off.

"Then get your own place."

"Fine." Part of him had been expecting this for months. "I'll have Sir start giving me my pay."

"After you go, sure. There's still the matter of the money you owe me. Room and board, expenses."

"How much?"

"Two hundred seventy three." Jack's mouth was a slash.

"I see." That was the exact amount Ianto had privately saved from his tips. "You found it."

"Wasn't hard. You should hide your money better."

Ianto went to his no longer secret hiding place and took out the wrinkled bills. He handed them to Jack. "Fine. We should be even now, yeah?"

Jack took the money and put it away in his own wallet. "Yeah."

Ianto thought. He could probably convince Sir to let him sleep at the pub; he'd proven himself trustworthy enough. If he ate his meals there, he'd make less but he could save the little he did. He only felt a small twinge as he remembered how long it had taken him to save everything Jack had just taken.

As if reading his mind, Jack said, "If you're thinking about a place to stay, Georgn would be happy to take you in."

"I'd rather go back to the Agency and be turned into a farmer." He turned away from Jack, angry and tired, and began gathering his things. He owned the clothes now, and the few things that had been in his pockets when he'd died, and that was it. No money, no ID, and most of the language he spoke consisted of food and drink orders. He supposed he was still better off than when he'd arrived.

"See you," Jack said, and didn't watch him leave.

Ianto marched all the way to work, cloaked in his bad mood. Jack was Jack, and of course he'd prefer to continue his string of semi-anonymous shags rather than think about anyone else. And perhaps it had been unreasonable to expect him to give up the lifestyle that had served him so well for the sake of someone to whom he frankly didn't owe a thing.

It didn't matter. He was better off away from this Jack. Yes.

Sir wasn't in yet, but the early shift had opened the pub to get ready for the lunch service. Ianto let himself in the back. There was a corner where he could stash his belongings, such as they were. Table Three had the softest cushion, and if Sir was amenable, he could sleep there tonight.

With nothing better to do, he started chopping vegetables for the lunch cook.

Afternoon came and went, and he found time to wander the streets immediately surrounding the pub. He didn't go far, not trusting his own sense of direction. For all the time he'd spent in the future on an alien world whose name he still didn't know, he'd barely seen anything. Now that he had a chance, he found the experience depressing. Poverty surrounded him, in the cheap homes and businesses he walked past. Windows were made of a thick plastic here rather than glass, so instead of being broken, many were covered with indecipherable graffiti, while multi-hued aliens and humans loitered outside abandoned buildings. Jack lived in a palace compared to this.

Curiously, the signs in this area were lettered in multiple alphabets, and his heart gave a skip when he saw Indo-European letters. They were in no language he recognised but just the sight of the ABCs was comforting.

Once he had money of his own, not Jack's, not Sir's, he would try to find a room somewhere around here. The rent would be low enough that he could probably afford it. He'd worked out the monetary system, though he still wasn't sure what reasonable prices were for things.

Leaving the sign with the letters he knew behind, he felt very alone.

Jack didn't come to the pub that night, but at least neither did John. Sir scolded Ianto for asking to stay, but allowed him to do it anyway. He heard Sir lock the door, and immediately he undressed down to his underwear to sleep. The cushion at Table Three wasn't nearly as comfortable as he'd hoped.

Once upon a time when Ianto's life had made some kind of sense, his sister had teased him about being a crybaby. He'd have gladly taken the teasing all over again to see her now, but he had to make do with just the tears.

VVVVV

He woke sore and unrested, shrugging into a clean outfit before the early shift bustled inside. No one stopped him from cleaning or helping in the kitchen, though he doubted Sir would pay him extra for the time. He wanted to stay busy, show willing. If this was to be his only place from now on, he had to make himself indispensable.

The dead mobile stayed in his pocket, the weight reminding him that he had a plan. During the day, he touched it from time to time, an alien artifact with a hidden message: find me, save me, please.

Late in the evening, as he took a quick rest at an empty table after cleaning up someone's supper that had splattered the wall, Ianto closed his eyes. He heard a thump.

A handful of bills were on the table. He frowned and looked up at the arm that was holding them there.

"Jack?"

Jack slid into the booth next to him. "You know, that's a cute nickname. I might have to use it the next time I need an alias."

Ianto sat back. For a tiny fraction of a second, he'd hoped it was his Jack come to rescue him across time and space. For a tiny fraction of a second, he'd allowed himself to be very stupid.

"What do you want?"

"This is yours," Jack said, and slid the money over to him.

"Doesn't look like mine." He'd made his tips in very small bills. These were large. There were at least a couple of hundred credits in front of him.

"It's your cut."

"Of what?"

Jack smirked. "That was a great idea you had, saving a fuge or two when I can't save the group. Drop them somewhere out of the way, not get caught. Great scam."

"It wasn't a scam." Jack raised his eyebrows.

"Anyway, the highest bidder gets to go. Easy money, and they're not going to need it if they go or if they stay. The past three trips I've been on, I've made over five thousand." Yawning, he said, "Since it was your idea, and I felt bad about not telling you sooner, I figured you should have a cut."

"I don't want your money." He stared at the pile, saw Kamb's family again. "You are actually forcing people to pay you to survive?"

"No, I'm charging a transport fee. If you'd rather I leave them all to die, that's your problem. Are you taking it or not?"

The money would start him on his new life, would get him a place to sleep and meals, and maybe even a way home. But despite his growing doubts to its existence, Ianto wanted to believe his soul was worth more than a few hundred credits. "No."

"Fine," Jack said, and swept his arm out, taking it all back. "You're supposed to be working now, aren't you?"

"Just taking a break. Why do you care? I'm not working for your benefit anymore."

"Of course you are. I explained to the owner that you ran off yesterday, and thanked him for keeping an eye on you. I even gave him a small present to show my gratitude. That came out of your cut, by the way, though I suppose it doesn't matter."

"I'm not going back with you."

"You've got no money."

"I'll make more."

"You don't have anyplace else to stay."

"We're sitting on my bed from last night. It was perfectly comfortable."

"My room is a mess."

"Clean it yourself." On Ianto's private list of three word sentences he'd always wanted to say to Jack, this one ranked second.

"I like having you around."

"Then act like it," Ianto said, and the anger was back and he got up before he started shouting. His hands shook as he rinsed out his sponges. Ianto ignored Jack when he went back out to wipe down tables while the crowd cleared out. He kept ignoring him when Jack got up from the table, grabbed the broom, and helped clear up shards from a broken glass he'd missed earlier, then without a word, helped with the mopping up on the dance floor.

"I really don't like you," Ianto said, as Jack took the mops from him and rinsed out the sticky residue himself. Badly. Ianto was going to have to soak those to get them properly clean, but Sir was shooing them out now so he could close up.

Jack went directly to where Ianto had hidden his clothes and grabbed them. "You don't have to like me. Coming?"

Irritated, and still unsure if he'd won this round or lost it entirely, Ianto followed him home.

VVVVV

They greeted the morning with grumpy sex, and after, Ianto asked him why he'd come back for him.

"Told you. My place is messy, and I missed you."

"You think I have more to tell you about your brother."

"There's that."

Ianto rolled onto his back. "I don't. Nothing important, nothing I can tell you that would help."

He felt Jack stiffen beside him, and then relax. "So tell me the unimportant things."

"You don't want to hear them."

"If you have any idea where Georgn is when he finds him … "

"I don't know. It's after you … "

"After I what?"

"Nothing."

"Tell me."

"No."

"Then let me buy the information from you."

"I don't want your money, and you won't give me the thing I want."

"Then name something else you want." Jack rolled over onto his side and played with the hair on Ianto's chest. "I mean, I want to find my brother more than anything, but I can think of a hundred other things I want, too."

"I just want to get home."

"Are you sure?"

He closed his eyes and thought about it. Why did he want to go back? Obviously he belonged there, but what were his reasons? Jack, and to a lesser extent, Gwen needed him. He wanted to see Rhiannon and the children again. He wanted to watch David and Mica grow up, to be there for them. Ianto's odds of having children of his own were remote, but he could spoil and love Rhi's kids. Assuming they'd survived the 456.

"I want to know what happened to my family."

"Don't we all."

"Gray's mad. When Georgn finds him. From the torture. He blames you for everything, and he spends the rest of his life trying to make you pay for not saving him." Jack lay very still beside him. Ianto rolled over to face him, entwined his fingers in Jack's. "I'm so sorry."

"So am I."

VVVVV

In the afternoon, Jack came in and without a word, dropped a stack of papers on the table.

"What's that?"

"Records. There are duplicate names so I brought what I could find."

"I can't read these."

"I know."

It took about fifteen minutes until Jack read out Rhi's birthday. "That one."

"March 14, 1981 to July 7, 2040. Married Jonathon Davies, June 26, 1999. She was young."

"Yeah. They started dating right after … " He paused, and a sad smile came to his lips. "Her boyfriend before Jonny was Jonny's best friend Owain. Rhi caught Owain messing about with a very pretty girl named Mary. Jonny bitched him out for it, and Owain gave him a black eye." He took a deep breath. "Mary was my girlfriend. Rhi was the one who fixed us up. Bad idea all around but I suppose it worked out well for Rhi in the end."

"She married again," Jack said, ignoring Ianto's trip down memory lane. "Brian Evans, May 14, 2022."

"I know him! He lived the next street over. Does it say what happened to Jonny?"

"No. Too many men with his name."

"Pity." He couldn't imagine the two of them divorcing. Perhaps Jonny had died. For all that they'd been dead for years, he was sad at the thought.

"David Davies, born October 2, 1999. Died September 9, 2078."

"Did he get married?"

"It doesn't say."

"Any kids?"

"It doesn't say."

"Can you tell me anything?"

"You read it," Jack said, pushing the paper at him irritably.

"Sorry. Anything on Mica?"

"One marriage, three kids. Geraint, Sian, and Ianto."

His hand went to his mouth. "Really?"

"No, I'm making this all up. You've got better intel than I ever do and you're complaining?"

"I'm not complaining. I just … I wasn't expecting to know anything."

"Just because she named her kid after you doesn't mean you know anything."

Ianto's head snapped over and met Jack's laughing eyes. "How did you … "

"Went through your wallet, remember?"

"You shouldn't know my name." His lips went numb. He'd been contaminating the timeline. Ianto stood up. "I need to leave."

"Relax. You said we're not going to meet for a long time. I'll have forgotten you by then."

Ianto glanced at the corner with his belongings, with the Retcon he'd nearly forgotten himself. "I suppose you will." He sat back down, and let Jack tell him the little they had on the births and deaths of Mica's children.

VVVVV

Ianto was trying to take an order from Table One when the alien came into the pub. Tweedledum immediately came out from where he'd been tending bar to get in the alien's way.

The alien was the size of a small elephant, with four arms, light greenish fur, and a mad, intelligent gaze that covered the room until it settled on Jack, who was dancing between two human women.

"Knee-rock!" shouted the green-elephant-alien, and Jack's head turned. The happy expression on his face was replaced by annoyance.

"Curr-en." Then he rolled his eyes and went back to dancing.

Tweedledum put a hand on the alien's third shoulder, and said. "Bokka." Leave. Dum's second job was as bouncer, and he was big enough for arguments not to be an issue usually. The alien swatted him aside, and Dum flew into the counter under the bar.

Sir and Tweedledee rushed out from the back, where they'd been filling orders. Sir shouted while Dee went for their laser rifle under the bar.

The alien ignored them, drew two long, curved blades from his belt, and roaring, went straight for Jack.

Panic and horror froze Ianto to the spot, and then as if in very slow motion, he knew that if the alien killed Jack, everything Ianto had ever known would fall apart. Jack was mortal here. Jack could die here.

Ianto rushed the alien with a cry to stop him, to buy Jack time to get to a defensive position or to get the hell away. He punched and kicked and swore, anything to distract the alien, anything to keep him away from Jack. For a moment, it seemed to be working, as the monster drew back in surprise at the unexpected attack.

Then …

The knives were cold, like ice, and so sharp he almost didn't feel either one until they were halfway though his shoulders and hit bone.

No pain, only cold, no pain, only grey light in front of his eyes, no pain, and the stink of the green fur, and then pain, oh yes. Pain.

The alien began to draw his arms back, and the knives ground as they retreated, and the pain was worse, and there was a sharp thud.

The alien stopped moving. Then it collapsed, and Ianto fell with it, eyes drifting across the screaming crowd, seeing Jack with his gun out, already pulling it back from where he'd shot, and the cold had given to warmth now and Ianto closed his eyes.

VVVVV


	4. Intersecting Geodesics Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Title**: Intersecting Geodesics (4/5)

**Title**: Intersecting Geodesics (4/5)

**Author**: **nancybrown**  
**Rating**: R (language, situations, violence)  
**Spoilers**: up through CoE, brief mentions of events from "Pack Animals," "Almost Perfect" and "Lost Souls"  
**Characters**: Ianto, Jack, John, (Eleven and announced companion)  
**Warnings**: Various shades of dub-con, non-descriptive mentions of sex trafficking, character death. I am operating under the assumption that John Hart is Captain Bad Touch, and so should you for the duration of this story.  
**Wordcount**: 36,000 overall, 5700 this section  
**Betas**: Deepest thanks go out to **51stcenturyfox** and **amilyn** for the Britpicking, beta work, and all those other little details that made this story stronger; anything that's still misplaced, misspelled, misplotted or just plain missing is my fault  
**Disclaimer**: Not my characters, not my show. If they'd catch a clue and shut up in my head, we'd all be happier.  
**Summary**: Stuck in the wrong time with a Jack who hasn't met him yet, all Ianto really wants is a way home.

VVVVV  
Chapter 4  
VVVVV

"If you ever do anything that stupid again, I'll kill you myself."

Ianto opened his eyes. The light was too bright, and he groaned. His head ached.

"What happened?" he tried to ask, but it came out, "Whappen?"

"You rushed a Lognian. An armed Lognian. Speaking of arms … "

He couldn't feel his. The panic rushed his throat again, and Ianto tried to sit up, but Jack's hand pushed him against the surface he was on; Ianto no longer assumed the existence of beds.

Someone said something in a different language than the one he was learning, and Jack responded. Ianto turned his head and was relieved to see his left arm, and with effort, turned to see its mate on the other side. His shoulders were heavily bandaged. No amount of effort made his fingers move.

"I remember." He rested for a while. The other voice discussed more with Jack, and Ianto let them talk. He was clearly no longer at the pub, and had been treated by someone. Nothing he could do.

After a while, his vision cleared enough to focus. The other voice was a robot, all white angles and surgical steel fingers. The doctor, though obviously not the Doctor.

"What's going on?" Ianto asked Jack.

"You were hurt. If I hadn't killed him before he pulled out his blades, you'd have bled to death."

"He was going to kill you."

"No, he thought he was. That was incredibly stupid of you to get in his way."

"I thought I was protecting you."

Jack brushed a hand over Ianto's head. "Don't do that again. I'm not worth it."

"You are to me."

"Sap."

"Arsehole." His mouth was dry. "Am I going to regain the use of my arms?"

Jack asked the doctor, who responded in what sounded like a positive tone.

"The doctor says you need to rest today and tomorrow, but you should be fine. He repaired the damage. Now you just need time for your tissues to finish healing."

"Finish?"

"It's not as high-tech as the Agency's equipment. I didn't want to get you noticed at a real hospital. The doctor is, um, let's call him an off the books kind of guy."

"We're at a back alley clinic?"

"What's an alley?"

"Forget it." Out of the way, behind the scenes, off the books. Whatever Jack called it, the clinic would be expensive, and Jack was sure to keep track of just how costly Ianto's treatment was.

"We're someplace safe. When you're ready to walk, we'll go home."

"Sir's going to be pissed that I didn't finish my shift."

"Are you joking? He's gonna tell stories about you for years. The cleaning boy who fought off an armed Lognian. Business will boom."

"Oh. Good." He closed his eyes, and didn't realise he'd fallen asleep until Jack nudged him again.

"Time to go."

VVVVV

Jack hired a car to take them home, and half-carried him back to the flat. He made Ianto sit in a chair while he readied a nice comfortable place on the floor with extra pillows, and then helped him undress and lie down.

"You're not supposed to eat until tomorrow, in case the medication makes you vomit, but you can have some water."

"That would be great. Thanks."

Jack brought him a glass and Ianto drank the whole thing. "Careful."

"Thirsty."

"That's the anaesthesia. You were under for a while. Fortunately, the doctor has worked on humans before."

"51st Century humans."

"Not much difference, except you have extra teeth and this weird little organ by your stomach he was wondering about."

"It's called an appendix."

"What's it do?"

"I don't think anyone knows." Ianto frowned. "Extra teeth?"

"In the back."

"Wisdom teeth."

"Do they work?"

He thought about it. "No."

VVVVV

Either Jack had time off or he took some holiday leave, because he barely left Ianto's side the next two days. It was nice to be taken care of, to have someone else fetch his meals as tingling, painful feeling came back to his hands slowly. Ianto dozed intermittently, falling asleep to the touch of Jack's hand on his forehead, the sound of Jack's singing in a low voice in his ear. When he was more alert, Jack read to him a bit from the books he had, which reminded Ianto of just how long it had been since he'd read anything himself.

"Can you teach me?" he asked Jack suddenly in the middle of what was probably a potboiler if Ianto could understand what was going on better. "To read? If you'll pardon the metaphor, it feels like my hands are cut off because I can't figure out what I'm seeing."

"I can try. You don't know much of the language."

"I've been picking up loads." Ianto hesitated, and then said, "Two pints and a side of fried tubers, you dumb thing," as well as he could.

Jack laughed. "We'll see. I was kind of thinking you might like to try an old film."

"You have films?"

"There are records of your time, you know. I'll bring you a list of the ones they have at the shop and you can pick something."

While Ianto slept, Jack must have gone out, because when he awoke, Jack had another paper, and he helped Ianto learn the words for it.

"Pa-doe. It means, 'adopted father.'"

"Pa-doe." Ianto thought. "The Godfather?"

"Could be."

They kept reading, slowly, until they reached one that was a literal translation of the original title. Ianto grinned. "Let's get that one." He'd seen a listing for "Goldfinger," but wanted to save it. This one would do.

"All right. I'll be back."

Jack went out and returned with a small silver cube. He set it on the table, activated the hologram, and cuddled beside Ianto on the floor. "This one is in the original English."

"Good." Ianto leaned back, and watched Jack's face as Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones dealt with aliens.

"This is nothing like how first contact went on Earth," Jack said.

"It's a movie. It's not supposed to be accurate, just entertaining."

"They catch and fight and talk to aliens for a living. Who does that?"

"I did. It was my job." They watched the scene with the vomiting baby squid. "I got more than my share of that."

"Liar. You were early twenty-first century. Aliens weren't on Earth in groups that stayed until later."

"Tell that to the Doctor."

"Who _is_ that? I couldn't find anything in the Agency records about him."

Ianto sighed. The Doctor was good at not being noticed when he chose, but it made tracking him down damned difficult. "Just watch the film."

VVVVV

Jack liked "Goldfinger," but he thought "The Godfather" was the best film he ever saw.

VVV

_It is Wednesday, the middle of his third week of suspension, and his rooms smell strange. Ianto has left his flat only once, to buy food he does not remember eating. As he came home from that one trip, he spied the camera at his door, realised belatedly it wasn't the only one._

_The first day, Owen and Tosh came to go through his flat and see what tech he had stolen from either Torchwood. Since he had taken everything to the Hub when he'd installed Lisa, they found nothing but apparently left the cameras. The second day, he packed Lisa's things, the few not still in boxes from when he brought them to Cardiff. The third day was his trip to get groceries. He set the bags on the kitchen counter and looked at the camera above the stove, and instead of putting the food away, he left it. That probably explains the smell._

_He has spent the last two weeks watching the cameras watching him. He wonders whose job it is to monitor him. Maybe the new woman, Gwen. Give her something to do, watching him read and use the toilet and sleep too much and sit quietly staring back._

_He expects a bullet or a pill. He finds himself dreaming about each. Jack is there in his mind every night, forcing Ianto to his knees before blooming pain and blessed peace, or pushing the Retcon down his throat before a different kind of oblivion. He dreams about fractures in his memories, chunks carved out of the gristle of his brain, dripping blood, like Lisa's body and Annie's body and the doctor's body. He will be someone else without these memories and the person he is now will be dead._

_The knock on the door is insistent, and he rises from the sofa where he's sat all day, letting the tingling in his feet wake him as he reaches the door._

_Jack is on his doorstep. It's time._

_"Can I come in?"_

_Ianto moves out of the way, lets the man who is going to kill him inside. He doesn't fight. There's no point in fighting._

_Seeing that Ianto is not going to offer him a seat, Jack goes to the sofa and sits. Ianto joins him, mouth tight, eyes wide._

_"How are you doing, Ianto?"_

_He blinks. His mouth moves to automatically frame the word "Fine" but freezes on the lie. He's not going to lie to anyone anymore, not about the things that matter. "I don't know, sir."_

_"You haven't left your flat in weeks."_

_"Nowhere to go, sir."_

_"Are you planning on killing yourself?_

_The sudden clarity of the question shocks him. "No." Its meaning sinks in. "You've been waiting for me to do the job myself."_

_Jack frowns in confusion. "What job?"_

_"You're here to kill me. You'll either shoot me, or make me forget everything since Canary Wharf, more likely since I started at Torchwood London, and I'll be just as gone only you'll have someone walking around who doesn't even know he's wearing a dead man's body." Like Lisa was at the end, wearing Annie like a grotesque suit._

_"If we had decided to kill you or Retcon you, you wouldn't have gone home that first night." Jack must be using the royal We, because Ianto had no illusions the others would be consulted in his final decision. "I told you that you're on suspension, not death row."_

_"You have been known to lie on occasion, sir."_

_"Likewise."_

_They sit in silence for a few minutes, Jack taking in the room, the few personal touches Ianto has around the flat._

_"The IDs were flawless," Jack says, his eyes on a photograph of Ianto and Lisa, snapped a year ago. Tosh and Owen took the small bag Ianto hid in the corner, holding two passports for each of them, money in different currencies, drivers licenses. Ianto wanted to be able to drop identities as they fled this terrible place and never look back. Now he doesn't know what he wants. Wanting happens to the living and he is not ready to number himself among them despite Jack's assurance._

_"I've had practise."_

_Jack reaches into his coat and Ianto waits for the Webley. Instead Jack pulls out a set of papers and puts them on the coffee table. "Did you know Michael Goodson?"_

_"The name isn't familiar."_

_"He worked at Torchwood One. He survived the battle."_

_"We didn't form a club."_

_"So you don't know him."_

_"No."_

_"He's dead. Swallowed a gun." Jack indicates the papers, and Ianto can see the letterhead, realises they are police reports._

_"I see," he says, although he doesn't. Does Jack think Ianto killed the man? Even if he does not, it would not be the first time Torchwood has blamed a death or five on someone who can no longer protest the charges. Creative rewriting of history makes cleanup easier while explaining the unexplainable to grieving relatives. He remembers Lisa's family at her memorial service, how he had to pretend at grief, not daring to share his wonderful secret with them. Now the grief is entirely his own, another secret hidden to the people who would care, a relief to everyone else who knows._

_"That makes nine suicides from the twenty-seven survivors," Jack is saying from another planet, and Ianto tries to pay attention. Jack asked him about suicide. "A third of the people who walked out with you are dead now." _ Simple mathematics belie the human costs. _It's like a line from a play and Ianto almost bursts out in inappropriate laughter. "This is funny?"_

_"I don't know. Is it, sir?" His face hurts from the smile, and he's pretty sure he's lost his mind._

_As he has waited here to die, he's pondered how they will convince Rhiannon he killed himself. Owen does the best handwriting forgeries, and Tosh can set a paper trail, and that new woman seems like she could cry well comforting Rhi. Jack might have the suicide note in his pocket right now, and Ianto's fingers itch to reach into Jack's coat and find it, read what Jack dictated to Owen. Jack is the devil himself, equal parts seductive charm and monstrous cruelty, but Ianto has observed that he's also a romantic and will likely ghostwrite tear-stained lines about Ianto's wanting to be with Lisa forever._

_"I'm tired of watching people die, Ianto. I'm tired of locking up dead bodies and stowing away the remainders of lives in sheds. Do you understand?"_

_He doesn't understand at all, has seen Jack happily kill people, but he nods anyway._

_"So that's settled," Jack says, as if they had an entire conversation. "Get your coat."_

_Ianto obeys, because he can, and Jack makes him get into the car, and Ianto sits calmly, wondering if they're going somewhere secluded, if Jack will dump his body in the woods or the Bay so as not to have to bother with freezing him. He watches the streets go by, vaguely recognising the area and then Jack has stopped the car, and they are going into a restaurant, and Jack is ordering for them both, something with protein and vegetables and a baked potato._

_He expects death, not spuds with butter and sour cream. Ianto reels._

_His brain, which has spent weeks almost entirely shut off and months before that tiptoeing around a nervous breakdown, begins to stir with the notion that this is not the end. The least likely person on the planet to want him alive appears to be genuinely interested in keeping him so. He isn't sure what to make of that, nor of the friendly if completely one-sided patter Jack is keeping up. He tells Ianto about things he's missed at work. Funny stories. Something witty Tosh said. How Gwen is settling in, all knees and elbows but getting there. How Owen got splashed with Weevil guts just yesterday. Ianto sits and listens owlishly as Jack talks and laughs at his own jokes and smiles at Ianto as if they are mates, as if neither ever threatened to shoot the other, as if they are starting over._

_"Eat," Jack says, when the food arrives. So he does. _

VVV

Sir greeted Ianto back with open arms, and even the Tweedles looked on him with a little awe. He still had to clean and help cook and wait tables when he could, but now when the customers got grabby, Dee would smack them with her tray. John wasn't so much banned from the pub as followed every minute by Dum until he got annoyed and walked out.

Ianto appreciated the attention, and the kindnesses, and he didn't mind the lost tips.

Jack spent more evenings at the pub than not when he wasn't working an assignment. After a while, Ianto lost track of how long it had been since he'd found someone else back at the flat, though Jack still spent nights away. Asking where he went or with whom wasn't on the table, and anyway Ianto had grown used to what they had, which was not so much a relationship per se as it was a roommate situation with benefits. For himself and for whatever it was worth, he opted to stay faithful to his Jack, and he'd chosen to believe an ongoing affair with Jack's younger self did not qualify as cheating but instead as long-term foreplay. Really spectacular, really long-term foreplay.

One foggy night, he overheard Jack and John arguing outside the pub, but John had stalked away down the street before Ianto could get a handle on what their fight was about.

To Ianto's surprise, Jack never once mentioned how much the clinic had cost.

VVVVV

As he learned to read, Ianto made more requests of files from Jack. So as not to give Jack more information about his own future than he needed, he gave him dozens of names, mostly of people Ianto had met briefly, but he really only wanted the files on Gwen, Martha, and, after some thought, Alice and Steven. He read over the brief information alone.

Gwen and Martha both lived long lives. He read the names of their children, the few records that survived of their other exploits. Gwen was listed as the head of the rebuilt Torchwood Institute for almost forty years. Martha was the Medical Director at UNIT for almost as long. Only one marriage was listed for each.

Jack explained, more than once, that the records the Agency had were incomplete, that genealogies were the best they could offer for most people and those themselves were compiled by later descendents. That would explain the paucity of data on Alice Carter. Ianto mourned when he read the date of Steven's death, and he didn't dare tell Jack why. But Alice's file was stranger and sadder, because while he could read the date of her birth, there was no record of her at all after a few months following the loss of her son, not even a death date. Alice had vanished from history, with no one left in her family to note her passing.

The Agency had numerous records of Canary Wharf. They referred to it as The Battle of Torchwood now, and debate had raged for years at the Agency whether they ought to acquire the available stock or if the presence of the Cybermen and Daleks contaminated the scene too badly. The records included the final death tally. According to Agency records, someone was considered to have survived a disaster if he/she/ze lived more than five years after the event. Including the suicides, accidents, and in Ianto's case alien death flu, the tally was the full employee headcount. History said there were no survivors of Canary Wharf.

He didn't yet dare to ask for records of Jack Harkness. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what had happened next.

VVVVV

One evening at closing, Tweedledee helped Ianto with the mopping, and then asked in broken English if he and his hoepa would join her family in the morning. It was a special day for Tweedlekind, apparently, because Dum and Dee both had the day off.

"Hoepa?" Ianto asked, and Jack broke in, "We'd love to," in Dee's language.

"What's a hoepa?" Ianto asked as they walked home together.

"Don't worry about it."

Jack had gotten directions from Dee and hired a car to take them to her home. Ianto had never seen anyone else's home on the inside, not since he'd been here, and he took in the overlarge mushroom shape with trepidation. Jack grinned at the spill of tiny Tweedles from the door, and helped translate Dee's hurried introductions of various offspring, nieces, nephews, cousins, and grandchildren as older Tweedles came in and out. He and Jack were the only humans, but Jack seemed perfectly at ease. Ianto followed his lead, and stayed close as Dee introduced her four husbands and two wives as they meandered in and out of the squashy rooms.

Ianto swore he heard the word "hoepa" again but Jack kept pushing him to meet more Tweedles.

Food covered the low table that took over most of one room, and the rest of the house was decorated in plump pillows and holographs of more Tweedles. Ianto could read the inscriptions on some of them, but it was hard.

"The Nardeks were the native species on this world," Jack told him. "Humans colonised it about a thousand years ago, and its location made this a hub of galactic trade. You'll see a lot of family pride in Nardek homes that can trace their ancestry back to before the other species moved in. This one," he said, pointing to a holograph that looked a bit like Tweedledum, "is T'wentani'kanadee's great-great-great-grandfather, many times removed."

"I don't think I could go past my great-granddad's name."

"I forget my parents' names some days," Jack said. His knees were attacked by a wee Tweedle, and he burst out laughing, and said something like, "That's a tree growing fast!"

"The language you're speaking. Is it Nardek?"

"Yeah. Official language here. You didn't know?"

"No one told me."

"Not my first language, but I'm good at it."

"Say something in your first language."

"No."

"Oh, go on."

Jack picked up the wee Tweedle, and then he said a phrase that sounded like a song. The Tweedle giggled and Jack put it down to run off.

"What's it mean?"

"It's a poem. Nothing important."

Dee called them to luncheon, and soon Ianto was tasting much better food than Dee had ever served up at the pub. He praised her as best he could in Nardek, causing the other Tweedles to laugh. Dee said the words he'd gotten used to hearing: half-wit, cleaning boy. Then she said something else, and Jack nudged him. "She's talking up your go at the Lognian."

"It was really not a big deal."

"Watch them." Ianto saw the looks of respect on the Tweedle, sorry, Nardek faces, and he puffed up a little inside.

Eventually, Jack thanked Dee for inviting them and said it was time to go. Nardeks and Time Agents had a holiday but the pubs were still open and Ianto was working a short-staffed job tonight.

Later, after being run ragged by Sir and even with a little help from Jack who could at least understand the rapid-fire orders from the customers, Ianto dragged home in Jack's bubbly wake. Jack had helped himself to drinks behind the bar while he'd tended for Sir, who'd been too busy cooking to do everything, and no one trusted Ianto not to accidentally poison someone.

Jack was singing, the same poem from earlier. Ianto had heard this song before, though he hadn't known it at the time, murmured sleepily into his hair after long nights at the Hub, accompanied by Myfanwy's cooing clicks from her nest or the hum of Ianto's icebox from the wall his bedroom shared with the kitchen.

"Tell me," he said, putting his tired hand in Jack's. "Please."

"'The sun is in the sky, and the water is in the sea, and I am with you. Perfection.'"

"It's a love poem."

"The best ones always are."

VVVVV

Jack brushed him awake with a kiss, and Ianto groaned. "It can't be morning yet."

"It can be and it is."

Something unusual reached Ianto's nose. Something … familiar. His eyes came open, and he sat up. The table had food on it, fruit and pastries from the cart two streets away. Jack must have brought them back.

"Breakfast," Jack said. "And a surprise." He handed Ianto a small bowl, hot to the touch, and Ianto sniffed the brown liquid inside.

"Is that … "

"I looked up the records. They still grow beans in the systems closest to Earth, so I ordered some and followed the instructions on how to prepare them. Thought you'd like it."

"I … " He took a sip, and it was hot and bitter and clearly scalded, but it was right in so many ways he could cry. "Thank you."

Jack's face broke into a smile. "I tried some. I don't see why you keep going on about the stuff."

"Let me figure out how to make it properly here, and I'll show you." He took another drink of the terrible coffee and knew what men dying in the desert thought of the brackish pools that saved their lives.

"Happy anniversary," Jack said.

"Hm?"

"You arrived at the Agency a year ago today."

"I did?" It had seemed both like a lifetime and no time at all.

"You did. After breakfast, we'll tour the city. You never really got a chance to see much when you first came, and we've been busy since."

"We're going to be tourists."

"Why not?"

"I hate tourists." Although it had been a year, true, and the sharp hatred had dulled.

"Everyone hates tourists. And we are going to be rich tourists, so they'll hate us even more."

"Let's eat."

VVVVV

A willowy building stretched above them into the low-lying clouds.

"The United Council building was built a little over two hundred years ago. There was a reception on the bicentennial that we crashed. Food wasn't very good, but the drinks were to die for, and Georgn and I went home with these three women who'd come all the way from Tau Ceti."

Ianto tried to take everything in as Jack scratched his brain for the history of the building and instead came up with more sex stories, which for once he ended before going into detail. They'd walked across bridges, checked out two tiny nature preserves, and marveled at building after building. Jack had a holomap, used it to point out attractions and let Ianto decide if he wanted to see them in person. All they were missing were cameras and overpriced t-shirts, he mused, but since the parts of the future world he tended to see were dark, dirty, and covered in someone else's vomit, this made a nice change.

At lunchtime, Jack bought them sweets that tasted a bit like orange sherbet and a bit like pie filling, and Ianto only ate about half before his stomach started to ache with sugar shock. Jack finished both treats himself, and then coaxed Ianto into walking several streets over to a shop that sold music on tiny blue chips.

Jack slipped one into Ianto's ear, and to his surprise, Depeche Mode started to play. "That's from your time, right?"

"Close." Ianto tugged it free from his ear. He didn't want to tell Jack he hated that song.

"There's more. We can pick up a few. Keep you from being homesick."

"Thanks." Even with his slow acquisition of the language, the labels on the chips were mysteries. With some help from Jack, he found a Pink Floyd album, not something he normally liked but given the sparse selection, he'd take it.

As they walked back towards home, Jack took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "I was thinking you might want to see the spaceport next."

"That'd be … " He stopped. "Why are you showing me all this?"

Jack shrugged. "I thought you'd like it."

"I do." But I'm going to have to do the same thing you do and never mention it again when I go home. "It's like you're showing off."

Jack made a point of looking down the street and away from Ianto. "Thought you might … " he mumbled something.

"I didn't catch that."

"Catch?"

"I didn't hear you."

"Don't worry about it." He dropped Ianto's hand and hurried forward across the street. Ianto caught up with him.

"Jack, why are you showing off?"

"Because then maybe you'll want to stay here." Ianto had never seen Jack blush before, was startled by the reaction.

"I can't stay here," he said automatically.

"Why not?" The colour flushed Jack's face completely now, and Ianto went to brush his cheek, but Jack pulled away. "Timelines, I get it. Whatever. But you're dead in your time. Why can't you just get used to the idea of staying here?"

"Because … " He thought of Jack, his Jack, needing him, and he almost missed the movement of this Jack's lips, almost missed him mouthing the words, "With me."

Jack glared. "Because of your boyfriend back home?"

Ianto bit his lip, and he looked at Jack, really looked at him. How had he missed this? Ianto had spent so much time anxious even after Jack had returned to them from his trip with the Doctor, knowing he could only ever achieve second-best status, knowing there was someone who, if he called, Jack would leave with without a backwards glance.

He'd never intended to do that to someone else.

It was an unfair question, but he needed to know. "Do you love me?"

Jack wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Jack … "

"Let's just go."

Ianto could not help the laugh that bubbled out of him, but he stopped as soon as he saw the hurt expression on Jack's face. "Oh God, I'm sorry. I'm not laughing at you. I'm just … You and I have the worst timing in all of history." Jack had already stalked away. Ianto caught up with him, grabbed his arms, and kissed him deeply.

"Stop it," Jack said, breaking the kiss. "Don't you dare feel sorry for me."

"I don't."

"I hope you choke on memories of your boyfriend."

"I do," Ianto said, and took his arms again. "Every single time I look at him." He held Jack's eyes, wanting him to know, wanting him to understand.

Jack blinked. Ianto smiled. "No." Ianto nodded. "Really?"

"Really."

Jack's mouth opened. Then it shut. "I showed you all those … That thing with the … ?" He mimed a particularly clever movement with three fingers, the memory of which immediately made Ianto's breath quicken.

"Apparently after I showed you. Mystery of the universe. Best not to think about it. I've been trying not to."

"You do love me." The smile on Jack's face now was one of the rare ones, the real ones he saved for when he was honestly happy, and not just trying to get something from someone. Ianto felt awful for having to ruin it.

"I … will." And there it went, the sun behind a storm cloud.

"But I'm him. The guy you're always thinking about, even when you don't know you're doing it. The one you've been trying to go home to. That's me."

"That will be you." He licked his lips. "You're going to live a lot more before we meet again. You're going to experience so much. Jack … " he didn't know how to go on.

"It's that way you look at me. Here and now. Like you think I'm some kind of hero, like I ought to do things better. Isn't it?"

"It's who you will be. You're going to be," Ianto turned his head, trying to picture his Jack in front of him, "the bravest man I ever meet." Jack looked at him in disbelief. "The man I know always tries to be the best person he can be, to make the best decisions he can. And sometimes he fails, and I love him even more in his failures because he always keeps trying harder. I love him for the man he thinks he ought to be."

Jack walked them over to a bench, lost in thought as they sat together.

"It's not that I don't like you," Ianto said. "I can see so much of who you're going to be in you now, and believe me, I'm happy to know he's in there."

"But I'm not him. Not yet."

"No. I'm sorry." He took Jack's hand and kissed the knuckle. "But I can promise you this much. When you're him, I am going to love you more than anything or anyone." A small part of him remembered that he had chosen Lisa over Jack, but he knew making that choice had been the only way he'd found peace with her loss, and with the choices he'd made after she was gone. Because he had been loyal to Lisa until the end, he could face falling in love with the man who'd killed the shell she'd become.

Ianto said, "Someday, I'm going to believe you hung the stars in the sky and that you can move mountains just by crooking your finger. I'm going to wake up next to you every morning and know I'm exactly where I'm meant to be, for as long as I can be lucky enough to have you. I'll follow you anywhere, do anything you ask."

Jack let out a breath. "All that?"

"Much more than that."

"Oh." Jack sat back on the bench, looked up at the sky. Overcast today, but the rain hadn't fallen yet. Ianto watched the dull clouds with him for a few minutes, wondering what he was thinking. "So. What you're telling me is that I'm stuck in a love triangle. And I'm two of the corners?"

Ianto chuckled. "You could put it that way."

"Then I guess I'm going to have to get out the big guns."

"Excuse me?"

The gleam was back in his eye. "You know what to do in a love triangle. You make sure you're the one who wins. I've got the advantage over future me." He frowned. "Past me. Whatever. Stupid English. I'm here. He's not. And I've got the best source of information about him sitting right next to me."

"I've already told you too much about your future."

"I don't need to know days and dates. I want to know about me. Tell me about the man I'm going to be, the one you're crazy about. Maybe I can get a head start."

Ianto studied Jack's face, was taken all over again by his relative youth. He was alive in ways that had nothing to do with immortality, and in fact had been destroyed by it. This Jack was so very human, and needy, and real, and he wanted to be better. He wanted an ideal to live up to. And if that ideal happened to be an older version of his own personality, well, Jack of any time had always been more than a little in love with himself.

"To begin with, he uses the name Jack Harkness," Ianto said. "He stole it from a dead man, a war hero who gave his life to save his men. He's been trying ever since to live it down."

VVVVV


	5. Intersecting Geodesics Chapter 5

**Title**: Intersecting Geodesics (5/5)

**Author**: **nancybrown**  
**Rating**: R (language, situations, violence)  
**Spoilers**: up through CoE, brief mentions of events from "Pack Animals," "Almost Perfect" and "Lost Souls"  
**Characters**: Ianto, Jack, John, (Eleven and announced companion)  
**Warnings**: Various shades of dub-con, non-descriptive mentions of sex trafficking, character death. I am operating under the assumption that John Hart is Captain Bad Touch, and so should you for the duration of this story.  
**Wordcount**: 36,000 overall, 7300 this section  
**Betas**: Deepest thanks go out to **51stcenturyfox** and **amilyn** for the Britpicking, beta work, and all those other little details that made this story stronger; anything that's still misplaced, misspelled, misplotted or just plain missing is my fault  
**Disclaimer**: Not my characters, not my show. If they'd catch a clue and shut up in my head, we'd all be happier.  
**Summary**: Stuck in the wrong time with a Jack who hasn't met him yet, all Ianto really wants is a way home.

VVVVV  
Chapter 5  
VVVVV

The process was slow. Jack continued bringing the odd temporal refugee back with him when he couldn't save the rest of the group, but instead of asking for payment, he chose the first person he saw before he left.

Once Ianto questioned him about it. "Don't you want to focus on adolescents, or perhaps find someone who's, well, worth it?" This was after the fifth such rescue, and the man Jack had saved had taken the news of his home's destruction, and of the four hundred souls who lived there, with glee and an announcement that he'd owed too many of them money.

"I don't," Jack said. He was fingering a glass of water, clearly drooling over the hypervodka Dum was carrying to the next table. But he didn't order one. Ianto had told him that his Jack almost never drank, even when the rest of them were having a pint together. This Jack had stared at him in disbelief, but he'd been trying ever since.

"If I start trying to sift through people, I'll go crazy. Who deserves it most, a teenaged boy with his life in front of him, or a pregnant woman, who might die in childbirth dropped on a colony world? Which one would you leave to die? And what about their families? No," he said. "This is better."

Ianto wanted to argue, but couldn't, and then the table with the hypervodka wanted food after Dum had gone, so Ianto stumbled through their order instead and left Jack to his own thoughts.

VVVVV

Ianto helped Jack with the refugees, the little he could. Jack had pulled the records of the Agency's colonies, and Ianto pored over them in his spare time, identifying good fits for people based on what Jack knew about his assignments. Now that Ianto could read the details, he saw what Jack had meant about the political nature of the assignments. There was something more, however, a pattern he was seeing out of the corner of his eye, not yet visible but sensed nonetheless.

As he researched missions past and current, Ianto began harbouring a suspicion. Just as Torchwood manipulated the records of the people they encountered, and just as the Time Agency hid their own fingerprints by modifying orders and paperwork, someone outside was quietly constructing a design in the Time Agency's assignments. John's missions were heavily involved with the pattern, Jack's barely at all. The Thames House acquisition had the right earmarks, though the traces were so subtle he could easily be imagining the whole thing. And he strongly suspected that was exactly what whoever was doing this intended. Without any idea of whom, or why, or even if this was someone hostile to the Agency in the present or an entity from the Agency's future with its own agenda, he couldn't begin to explain his observations to Jack. No use worrying him with shadows. But still he wondered.

Jack continued only to identify about one group in five as a good candidate for the program. Every time he came back from a failed mission, Ianto read the news in his eyes long before Jack could tell him the details: a war gone wrong, a disaster where the bodies couldn't be recovered. Jack saved one, perhaps two people on those missions, and while Ianto kept track of those for him, showed him the slow growth of names on the list of lives not lost, he knew Jack read the hundreds of other names that were written invisibly on the second list beside it.

Without the booze and months off the drugs, Jack had only one way left to numb himself to his own failures. Ianto found it painful and ironic that Jack's quest to become a better man was leading him into a deeper despair, and so he did his best to make Jack forget, if just for an hour or two.

Ianto told himself this wasn't love, merely kindness. This Jack needed him, too.

VVVVV

One of the regulars, a Xolisian, had dumped zir drink on the head of zir companion, and while Dum broke up the ensuing fight, Ianto cleaned up the mess with a sigh. He almost didn't head Dee above the commotion shouting for him.

"James!" He turned his head, and red panic on her face.

"Porta?" What?

She grabbed his hand, dragging him outside. He dropped the mop and followed her, worry eating at his gut. As soon as Dum had evicted the Xolisians, his comforting bulk was behind them as Dee led Ianto two doors down.

Jack lay in the street, head at an awkward angle, chest bloody, clearly dead.

Ianto fell to his knees beside the body. "No. Nononononono." Dee's hand was on his shoulder, radiating sorrow and sympathy, while Dum accosted the nearest person and barked out questions.

Had he not watched Jack die dozens of times, he was sure he'd be slipping into shock now, as he felt Jack's cooling skin. As it was, Ianto's mind was racing. Jack was mortal. Jack was human. Jack couldn't die now or he'd die forever and this was nothing like the death that had granted him eternal life.

His breath caught, panic taking over, and Ianto scrambled to his feet, pushing it away.

He turned to Dee, and said haltingly, "Watch him here. Don't touch him. Please." She brushed Ianto's cheek, but he broke away and ran.

On their walks, Jack had shown him places around the city. Once he showed Ianto the building where John lived, and now Ianto had to find it, had to find the man he hated before the one he loved was gone forever.

Twelve hours. Jack's body was growing cold, so they had lost an unknown amount of time. Ianto longed for a watch, a timer, something to cling to that he would know his deadline. The Agency's magic could bring him back, oh please oh please.

John lived in a back room of a squat house near the nightclub that was called Carbuncle. Ianto wasted precious minutes checking the club first, not seeing John in the press of bodies, and he almost didn't find John's house.

Ianto pounded on the door, shouting, pleading, finally his fingers skittering over the thick brown door as his voice cracked and gave out. The door flew open, and Ianto nearly fell inside, fell against John. The room was even less decorated than Jack's, and Ianto saw a canine humanoid sprawled naked inside, almost lost in the haze of whatever the two of them were smoking.

"What do you want?"

"Jack. Jarron. He was killed. He's dead." A dozen expressions crossed John's face, starting with shock and grief, settling on amused disinterest.

"So?"

"You have to save him."

"Dead's dead. Get used to it."

"No!" Ianto grabbed John's shoulders, wishing the man had on a scrap of clothing. "The Time Agency brings people back from the dead. They have tech. You can get it. Georgn, please!"

"That stuff is strictly controlled. Against regulations to use it on an Agent."

"You never follow the rules."

John watched him. "How do you know we can bring people back? That's classified."

"They brought me back. I was dead, and they saved me."

His eyebrows rose. "Wait. You're a _fuge_?" He let out a cruel laugh. "He gives me attitude about not touching the merchandise and then he goes and nobs a fuge. Idiot." He grabbed Ianto's face and petted him. "And he kept you, too. The Agency is going to fire him twice."

"He's already dead." A wild thought came to him. "You can't watch him get fired if he's already dead."

"Ah, too true." John glanced over the shoulder to his playmate. "You still here, love? Get out."

Time was ticking away but John was dawdling. Ianto wanted to scream. "Will you help him?"

"You haven't given me a reason why I should."

"Because you love him too." John flinched. He didn't react when the dog-man brushed past them with a snarl.

"Not good enough."

Ianto closed his eyes. "I'll pay anything."

"Anything? Now that's a good price." His hand slipped down, and it didn't matter, nothing mattered except getting Jack back.

Ianto grabbed John's hand. "I'll pay you once he's alive again."

"You'll pay me whatever and whenever I want, or you don't get anything." He stepped back, reached down to the floor and picked up a filthy pair of pants, began putting them on. "But you're right. Time isn't on our side. So a little up front now, and I'll take the rest out of you later."

"Whatever," Ianto said through clenched teeth.

"Tell me your name. Your real name."

"You know my name."

"No one is named James Bond. What kind of arsehole do you take me for?"

"Ianto Jones." His own name, not spoken in well over a year, felt wrong in his own mouth.

John sized him up, apparently decided he wasn't lying this time. "Jarron Harper. Nice to meet you, Ianto Jones."

"But _he_ goes by Jarron." His head spun, while John laughed.

"We trade names all the time, he and I." He bent in to Ianto's ear. "That's how I know you're temporary, little fuge."

More than once Jack had used the last name Harper back in their old life, and part of him had wondered if it was to tweak Owen, and another part wondered, after they discovered Jack's secret, if Jack's fondness for their obnoxious medic had come from a fling he might have had once in the late '70s. But Owen shared none of Jack's handsome features, instead leaning towards the sharp lines and angles that John wore on his own face, and now Ianto had something new to wonder.

"Where is he?"

"Near the pub where I work. My coworkers are watching the body for me."

"Bad move. Nards'll probably cook him up and eat him."

"They're not like that."

"Whatever you say." John shut his door, throwing on his unbuttoned shirt. "I'll meet you there."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. You're going to hate paying me later."

Those words echoing in his ears, Ianto made his cautious way back to the pub. To his relief, Jack's body lay unmolested where he'd left it, Dum keeping watch. Ianto thanked him as well as he could, and Dum pulled him into an unexpected hug.

Ianto slid to the ground, and he took Jack's head into his lap.

Every death differed. He hadn't known that Suzie and Lisa had each killed Jack until much later, so his first real experience with losing Jack had been when Owen shot him. The shock had raced through him, and he'd operated without thinking the rest of that awful day. Jack had come back to them then, and Ianto had tried to show his regret and sorrow by carrying and caring for Jack even as he reeled at the impossible second chance they'd been given. And then Jack was gone again, dead to Abaddon's destruction, and Ianto had given in to despair and given up on Jack, had let Gwen be the one who kept vigil against all hope. When Jack came back at last, he'd cursed himself for his lack of faith, and he swore that he would be the one who waited for Jack from then on. When Jack had left them, alive this time and chasing the Doctor, Ianto had squashed his own doubts (_we betrayed him, murdered him, why would he ever return? _) and ignored his own fears (_he's happier where he is, he's never coming back_) and quietly kept Jack's room and his possessions safe and where they belonged. Ianto would not be found faithless a third time.

When Jack was shot, when Jack was slashed in the throat by a Weevil and bled out, when Jack was broken or burned or bent, Ianto waited patiently. That was his task. When Jack had pushed him out of the Hub before the bomb in his belly had taken out their base, half of him had been horrified at the thought that Jack might not come back, but the rest of him had worried what would happen should Jack wake up from that agonising death alone.

Now he waited, oblivious to the aliens walking past him or stopping in curiosity. He'd tried counting in his head as time slipped past, but there really was no chance of keeping track, so instead he brushed all the dirt off Jack's face and clothes, and he talked nonsense into Jack's poor dead ears. The planet's two small moons rose slowly above the buildings. Jack had told him once that life tended to evolve on planets with moons, something about tidal forces, the work of chemicals on alien seashores drifting and forming into complex chains. Ianto stroked Jack's arms, telling him about the moons, wishing the flow of blood to return like the tides.

At last, he heard quick footsteps and knew it was John before the blond hair came into view. "I could only steal a little," John mumbled, and took a flask from his pocket. Golden light spilled out in a cloud of bright pinpricks, which settled over Jack's wounds as Ianto held him and prayed.

Jack jerked in his arms, and his eyes came open. Under his torn and bloody shirt, Ianto watched the skin mend, become whole. Jack clutched at Ianto's arms around him as he had, as he would, eyes skittering everywhere and resting on John's face crouched beside them, as John collected the tiny dots of light with care and coaxed them back into the flask.

"Wha - "

John's face cracked open with a grin. "Almost lost you there, Gorgeous."

"There was," he coughed. "A Lognian. Looking for his brother."

Ianto's stomach went cold. "Oh."

"Got behind me. Stupid. Won't happen again."

Ianto brushed lips over Jack's face, his nose. "I'd ask that you never die on me again, but that'd be a terrible promise to make you keep."

"Die?"

"You'd passed on, mate," said John, sitting back on his haunches. "Your little pet here had me get something to patch you up." Then he smacked Jack on the head.

"What was that for?"

"You. You've been nobbing a fuge. Mr. High and Mighty."

Jack's eyes met Ianto's as he slowly sat up. "Are you going to turn me in?"

"I'd love to," said John, and there was nothing but truth in his mirthful voice. "But Ianto here," he said, with emphasis on the name so that Jack knew, "has promised me payment for rescuing you, and turning you in would only get you fired and him shipped off to some godawful place with sheep."

"You like sheep," Jack said. John laughed.

"I need to get him home," Ianto said, helping Jack to unsteady feet. "He's always a little off after dying."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jack asked.

"Don't worry about it."

"I'll be by later," John said, in promise and in threat. Ianto pushed away his worry and focused on relief. Jack was alive. Jack was safe.

Halfway home, Jack had Ianto take a different road, and then another. They came out among a huddling of small houses, which Jack guided him through until he reached a doorway with an unusually thin Nardek. Jack was walking on his own by then, and left Ianto outside over his protests, taking the little money Ianto had on him. He emerged a while later with a large parcel under his arm, and they made their way home in silence.

After Ianto had helped Jack out of his clothes and under the blankets, cleaning up the last of the blood with a flannel and warm water, Jack said, "You brought me back."

"I had to. The timeline needs you."

"Do you?" Ianto ducked his head, and then he smiled. "Good."

VVVVV

John's knock came hours later, after Jack had drifted off. Ianto answered the door, his own heart beating too quickly and mouth too sour to sleep. John smelled of stale sex and fresh arousal, and his eyes glittered in the dim light of the hallway. Ianto moved aside to let him in. Best that it was here, best that Jack would be with him. He closed his eyes as John yanked off his shirt, left hot kisses down his collarbone.

"Hey, Georgn," said Jack sleepily. "When did you get here?"

"Just arrived," said John, mouth offering tiny bites over Ianto's chest. "Glad you woke up. Want some of this?"

"I've had that."

"Finally getting bored?" John's hands were squeezing his arse, pinching and poking.

"Hardly. He could teach you some things."

Ianto felt John's laugh in his belly, following by a warm swipe of his tongue. "I doubt that." John slid up Ianto's body again, grubby clothes rasping against bare skin on his torso, hands sliding around front to work at the fastening of his pants.

"Found you a present," said Jack.

"I've got my present." John had finally moved far enough inside for Ianto to close the door. He was reconsidering doing this with Jack in the room. Having an audience for his humiliation, even Jack, filled him with more dread.

"Found something better."

"He's got a twin?"

Jack had risen to his feet, cock at half mast already. Ianto watched John lick his lips. Months had passed since he'd last found the two of them together, and John clearly wanted a return to the way things had been. As Jack bent over the table to grab the parcel he'd bought, John groaned, his excitement pressed hard into Ianto's hip.

"You are beautiful," he told Jack in a hushed voice as Jack sauntered over, placing a kiss at the corner of John's mouth and pushing the package into his arms.

Forgetting Ianto for the time being, John grabbed for Jack with one hand and clasped his present with the other, a greedy child at Christmastime. "Which present do I open first?"

"That one."

John ripped off the paper, and found a neat plastic bag full of a viscous blue liquid. "You shouldn't have."

Jack said, "Just a little thanks for saving my life."

John's lips moved, echoing what Jack had just said without registering the meaning. "Indulgence. Where did you find it?"

"I know a guy."

"You are so introducing me."

"In the morning. Have a taste."

John punctured the baggie and poured a measure into his mouth, moaning as it hit his tongue. "Oh. Oh that's nice." He licked it off his mouth, the tiny splatter that blued his knuckles. "I shouldn't have this tonight. You know what it does to me."

Jack shrugged. "You'll be fine by morning. Enjoy yourself. You can sleep here."

Blissed out, John sank bonelessly to the floor and drank down more of the Indulgence, throat contracting as he swallowed hard. Ianto watched Jack's face, then found John pillows to brace himself, noticing as he did that the swelling at John's crotch had gone away.

"Want some?" John said to Ianto, in a rare display of generosity, and Ianto declined. "Your loss."

"I used to love Indulgence," Jack said, stroking John's head once and then sitting back to watch. "Imagine spending half a day feeling the way you do right after a really magnificent orgasm." Ianto's eyes widened. "Exactly."

"They can bottle that?"

"They can sell it for twenty credits a hit. You're in that sleepy place but not quite asleep, and you think you're in love, and there's no way you're getting it up the rest of the night." Ianto turned to him in shock and growing admiration. Jack pulled him in for a kiss, and whispered so that John could not hear, "I'm not going to let him hurt you. I'm never going to let him hurt you."

Ianto kissed him passionately in response, relief fueling his desire. As John lay in his languid stupor beside them, they made love among the pillows, laughing low and then each biting the other's cries back so as not to disturb John much.

As Ianto lay back, Jack above him gloriously alive and young and panting Ianto's name, he heard John whisper, "Just beautiful," before falling silent again. The knowledge that they were being watched thrilled him and pushed him over the edge. Jack joined him moments later, and they held each other, kissing softly. The world was right, and he was where he belonged. Every Jack was his Jack, and Jack meant "home."

Ianto met John's open eyes, and for a moment, he forgave him.

VVVVV

John was gone when they woke. He hadn't left a note, just the empty container of Indulgence. No word on if he'd be back, if he still intended to collect his payment, but Jack said they were even and Ianto had to believe him.

VVVVV

Seasons weren't something that happened on this world. Nevertheless, it was a perfect summer's day, and Jack had just returned from a successful mission, so they took the morning to meander down street after street. They stopped at Dee's house to deliver something crispy and warm that Jack had picked out from a bakery. Dee and her family greeted them pleasantly, thanking them for the gift, expressing disappointment that they couldn't stay.

Honestly, they could have stayed much longer, but Ianto felt the same thing Jack did: that wanderlust which filled the air on certain mornings, with the promise of travels and adventures. He wanted to walk, to move, and so they wandered hand in hand, looking into shops and homes, talking about nothing important, tasting the warm air like a tonic.

When the familiar humming noise came in over the sounds of the city and the crowd, everything fell into place.

Ianto let out a little cry, not sure if it was hope or disappointment, and he dragged Jack back towards home, back to the spired building where they lived, where against all logic and architecture, a blue police box sat by the street as if it had always been there.

The door creaked open, and a young man popped out, with a crooked smile and a bowtie. "I thought it might be you," he said to Jack.

Ianto stopped, frowning. "Where's the Doctor?"

"Right here," said the man. He peered at Ianto's face. "Oh. It's not him. It's you."

"What's going on?" Jack demanded, hand reaching for his weapon. Ianto calmed him down.

"Jack, this is the Doctor. I told you about him."

"Wait," the Doctor said, and pulled out a pair of glasses. "No." He inspected Jack up and down, broke into a delighted grin. "But you're so young!"

"You haven't met him yet," Ianto said.

"Oh I can see that."

"English is terrible for time travel," Jack said.

"I'm not speaking English," said the Doctor. "What name are you going by these days?"

"None of your business. James, why is he here?"

The Doctor looked confused. "James?"

"It's all right. The Doctor knows who I am."

"We never technically met. You helped us tow the planet back."

"You towed a planet?"

"You drove," the Doctor said. "Or you will. Oh, this is priceless. Jack before I knew him." Then he frowned. "Wait, I remember Jack when we first met." Suspicion darkened his face, to be replaced by joy when the TARDIS opened again, and a pretty young woman, all red hair and smiles, joined them.

"Amy! This is my very good friend, um, well I don't know his name right now, but you can call him Jack. And this young man is the reason we're here."

"Ianto Jones," he said, taking her hand. "A pleasure to meet you."

"Amy Pond. You broke time?"

"I don't know." He looked at the Doctor.

"You did. A bit. You're not supposed to be here." The Doctor scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. "You're _really_ not supposed to be here."

"The Time Agency took me. Everyone from Thames House." Then it was Ianto's turn to frown. "Where were you? We needed you."

And he knew before the Doctor spoke what he would say. "I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry."

"Harriet Jones. She was right about you. She said someday we'd need you and you wouldn't come. That's why she made Torchwood London so powerful. But we weren't enough. We were never enough."

"No. But you Cardiff bunch were brilliant! Saved the world! Knew you had it in you."

Ianto didn't say what the cost had been. He could spare Jack at least that much future knowledge. "Have you come to take me back?"

"You can't stay here. I've been chasing temporal ripples for a week. Well, our kind of week. Well, it's been some time. And it all comes back here to you."

"You're sure?"

"Also, I got this message." The Doctor pulled out a piece of blank paper. The words "find me, save me, please" scrawled across in Ianto's handwriting. He no longer carried the mobile with him everywhere, but he touched the place where it would have been in his pocket.

"I thought that. Months ago." Since he'd nearly flunked the basic psychic training back in his first days at T1, he'd had no reason to think it would work.

"Well, time travel. You know."

"You're leaving?" It was the first thing Jack had said in several minutes.

The Doctor sucked in a breath, then he turned to Amy. "All right, don't go far. This should be enough to find something fun." He handed her a credit slip. "Go on."

After she was out of sight, the Doctor said, "I'll go rushing heroically to her rescue in a while."

"Why?"

"Oh, I'm sure there will be a need. Or she'll come rushing to mine. Bit of a pattern with us, nothing to worry about. Anyway, Jack. You and I haven't met yet, and that leaves me with a sticky problem."

"I have Retcon," Ianto said. "I can make today not have happened for him. Easy."

"Can you make yourself not have happened? How long have you been here?"

His mouth went dry as Jack jerked violently against him. "You can what?"

"It's a drug I have," Ianto said. "Based on the Agency's formula, I think. It wipes memories, can rewrite them somewhat when necessary. I had it with me when I came forward, enough to make a small crowd forget an alien warship crash. I could give you one, and you'll forget you met the Doctor today."

"And if you give me more than one?"

The Doctor cut in, saving Ianto from having to answer, "Is there anyone else who shouldn't know you've been here?"

VVVVV

He found John at the pub, and his glass was half-full. Perfect. Swallowing the bile, Ianto sauntered over to his seat, and without an invitation, slid his leg over John's lap, straddling him. He ignored the stares from Dee and Dum. He wouldn't be able to explain it to them anyway.

"Well this is unexpected," John said, grinning. "Decided to trade up after all?"

"Jarron and I were talking," he said, rubbing John's jaw with one hand and reaching behind himself with the other. Ianto grabbed John's drink and brought it in a lazy arc to his lips, taking a deep draught and licking his lips.

John's breath caught, and then Ianto moved in for a kiss, tasting only the gin on John's tongue. He twisted his hips, rubbing their groins and capturing John's moan deep in his mouth.

John didn't notice the pills dropped into his drink, even after Ianto stirred it with his finger and then drew the finger between John's lips so he could suckle off the alcohol. Despite himself, Ianto felt his pants tighten, and he almost went in for another kiss but stopped before he could accidentally Retcon himself with the residue on John's mouth.

"Wait here. Five clickits. I'll be back." He didn't have to fake the hoarseness in his voice as he climbed off the tent in John's pants. "Be ready to come back to ours."

"I'm ready now," John breathed, and Ianto bit a soft place on John's jaw before he pulled away.

He went into the back, telling Sir that he would be gone for a few days, and he watched from hiding as John downed his drink in two gulps. With the dose he'd been given, it took less than a minute for John's head to fall to the bar, a snore escaping his mouth. Ianto came back from the shadows, placed his lips against John's ear, and said, "You don't remember me. James Bond and Ianto Jones never existed."

John kept snoring.

Jack waited outside, impatient and impressed. "That was hot."

"That was revolting."

Jack's eyes went to Ianto's crotch, and he grinned. "Admit it, a threesome would have been amazing."

"Yes. And then he'd have shot us both."

"Worth it."

Jack's hand slid into his, and it was nice, so nice. Ianto slowed his pace, let Jack fall into step with him. He wanted to go home, but he also wanted to linger, just a bit more. Here Jack wasn't some well-seasoned immortal, wasn't this demigod who knew the secrets of time and space and every sexual trick ever invented by humankind. He was just Jack, who loved Ianto much more than he did the Doctor, and Ianto was loathe to lose that feeling just yet.

They reached the TARDIS. Amy had a shimmering golden dress in her hands, as the Doctor explained that this was a retro look, originally seen in the forty-third century but all the rage again.

"Taken care of," Ianto said. "He's going to be a problem later."

"He's going to find Gray later," Jack said, and for Jack, that was all that would matter.

The Doctor watched the two of them. "And now it's your turn."

"I was thinking about that," Jack said, stepping back into what Ianto knew to be one of his better defensive postures. "I don't have to tell anyone what I know. I can keep secrets."

"You haven't met me, not yet, and you need to meet me again for the first time or our timeline will be broken." The Doctor's face was sad.

"I can pretend. You don't know I didn't pretend not to know you."

"You didn't. When we met, you had a piece of your memory gone. Two years. It's why you leave the Time Agency. It's how we meet."

"Two years?" Jack was pale. "I can't lose two whole years."

"I've been here almost that long," Ianto said. "You have to forget me." His throat constricted.

"No." Jack backed away further.

"Jack, you'll see me again. I swear."

"It's not that." His eyes were so young. "I love you. And I can't wait to meet you and fall in love with you all over again. But if I forget you now, I go back to being the person I was before I knew you. I don't want to be him." He went to Ianto, took his arms and rubbed them gently. "Please. The man I am now … "

Ianto slipped from his grasp, and he grabbed Jack's hands, placing a kiss on each one. "You'll be him again. It just takes time." Jack closed his eyes, let Ianto press his lips against his head, his nose, and finally his mouth. "It'll be okay."

He pressed the bottle into the hand he clasped with Jack's. "You'll need the rest of these." Ianto turned to the Doctor. "It's best if I get him inside. He'll sleep for a while." The Doctor nodded, and Ianto remembered the terse instructions they'd been given about Donna Noble, while the rain fell from the atmospheric shift, and knew the Doctor understood.

"Don't dawdle," he cautioned, and that was all.

They walked together back to the flat, not speaking, not having anything left to say that wouldn't be undone by the Retcon. Words were hard, and Ianto abandoned them entirely, instead caching away every sense he could, the feel of Jack's fingers brushing his, the sound of Jack's breath hitching in his chest, the fear in his eyes.

As the door opened, he pushed Jack into the room roughly for one more kiss, nipping and tasting and wanting this, just this. Jack fell into him, his hands everywhere, and the bottle pressing between them like a chaperone.

"It's going to be like dying," Jack said into his neck. "Isn't it?"

"First one's always the hardest."

"Did that already. I should be fine." They laughed together, a little, sharing air, sharing life, and then Jack brought up the bottle, opened it, and shook the pills into his hand.

"That's a lot," Ianto said, staring at the pile, and knowing he'd need them all.

"You're going to be hard to forget," Jack replied, and he threw back four. Ianto drew him some water. As the last few went down, he could already see the muddiness creep into Jack's face.

He was losing him.

Ianto helped him to sit on the floor, helped him finish the water, found him a blanket.

"I don't … " Jack said, and paused, the words jumbling out of him. "I can't … " His eyes narrowed. "Who … ?"

"No one," Ianto said, and rubbed Jack's face.

He caught Jack as he toppled sideways and helped lay him down. "I'm no one. You never met me, never saw me. You don't know my name. The last two years never happened. We never … "

He broke off, seeing Jack's eyes slip shut. So much life yet to come for him, so many things to lose, and Ianto could not protect him from a single pain. Or perhaps just the one. "Don't trust Georgn."

Jack made a noise and Ianto was sure he'd heard.

Ianto didn't dare an "I love you," not now, but he pressed his lips to Jack's forehead and he closed his eyes until the prickles behind his eyelids abated. He glanced around the flat, took the handful of items that were his, made a slight mess of the rest just to be sure. He whispered the instructions to forget one last time into Jack's ear. Jack slept.

Down in the street, the TARDIS waited. Ianto didn't even bother taking a last look around before stepping inside.

"All set, then?" the Doctor asked with a gaiety that failed to appear real.

"Part of me wants to stay and watch, to make sure he's all right when he wakes up."

"Better if you don't."

"I know."

Jack would awaken, would feel like a bad hangover, would no doubt go down to the pub and carouse with John and the rest, drinking to chase away his headache and laughing at John's own memory gaps. He'd pull something good-looking and willing, or he'd pull John if he woke feeling particularly self-destructive. They'd be high within fifteen minutes, and fucking within half an hour.

That was who Jack had to be for now. Ianto didn't have to watch.

"I want to go home."

"You can't." The Doctor's face was kind, and unrelenting. "You died. History is very clear on the matter. Your family moved on. Torchwood moved on."

"And Jack?"

"Well, you know Jack."

"Yeah." His eyes hurt again, and he closed them. "I knew it wasn't possible. I hoped, but I knew." The brief records of Rhi and the kids, they were all that was left of his family now. No amount of scouring could find a single record of Captain Jack Harkness beyond a few years after Steven's death. He'd fled Earth, come back, and then left for good. Yeah, Ianto knew him.

"So. We have a problem. I can't leave you here without upsetting the timeline. I can't take you home without making things worse."

"I'm not that important."

"If you went back, you would be. And that unravels everything."

"I don't want to travel with you."

"You weren't invited." It wasn't a rough insult, though it felt like one just the same. "But I have a place in mind." His fingers moved across the console, punching up a star chart. "Planet XKX-917. Fifteen star systems away from here, along a major supply route, Earth-like climate and atmosphere. No native sentient life, but never colonised, either. For some reason, it just gets passed by, even by the Time Agency. Perfect hiding spot for the man who needs to be out of the way of history for a while."

Amy came to the doorway. She had put on her new dress, and the Doctor's face broke out in a smile. "I told you it was your colour."

"Do you like it?" she asked him shyly, and Ianto took a quiet breath in the name of every damned person who'd travelled with the Doctor and fallen in love, even if just a little.

"It's as lovely as you are," Ianto said, channeling his inner Harkness, which earned a beaming smile from Amy and a frown from the Doctor. Not that Ianto had done it on purpose. Not that he was ever jealous of the Doctor. Nor had he once spent an informative evening in a pub with a bloke named Mickey Smith, nursing pints and swapping stories and making more and more outrageous boasts about what they'd like to say to the man should the world not be in peril at the time. Oh no.

"Planet XKX-917, then," said the Doctor, a little loudly, and he cranked something on the console.

"I love this part," Amy said, coming up next to Ianto but watching the Doctor, enraptured. "Have you done time travel before?"

"Some," he said. "More than I ever thought I would." He looked around. "This is a bit old-fashioned, then, isn't it?"

"State of the art technology," the Doctor said, offended on behalf of his ship. "That Vortex Manipulator Jack's got, that's barely a toy. This is the real thing." He stroked a panel lovingly. "Anyway, most of you lot travel through time the really old-fashioned way." The TARDIS jerked and hummed, and then stopped. "We're here."

Ianto's heart fell. Already?

"I'll need some supplies," he heard himself say. "And a means of contacting the ships to restock." He'd need shelter first. An empty world, but there would be wildlife. Predators? If he'd stayed put back when this mad ride had started, he'd have been imprinted with basic survival techniques, something. Instead, he'd gotten Jack.

"Taken care of." The Doctor swept Amy's hand into his, and told Ianto, "Wait here."

As the door to the TARDIS opened, Ianto spotted a blue sky peppered with clouds, lush green mountains in the distance, and what appeared to be soft, sweet grasses in the meadow where they'd landed.

The door shut, and a viewscreen turned on, perhaps automatically, perhaps not. The camera allowed him to see what he had glimpsed through the doorway: a house, large and angled, made of dark red wood. Huge, sweeping windows reflected the muted sunlight from the planet's star, and gave nothing away.

A figure made its way across the meadow from the house.

"Hello, old friend," the Doctor said.

Ianto stared. He could just make out the grey hairs edging the dark. Three thousand years, travelled the really old-fashioned way. Oh, the Doctor did fancy himself so very clever, didn't he?

"Doctor," Jack said, and gave a winning smile to Amy, who looked startled to see him again so soon. "Amy Pond, haven't seen you here in a while."

"You haven't seen me at all yet. I think. Nice to meet you." Ianto could just make out the blush as Jack took and kissed her hand.

"We were in the neighbourhood," said the Doctor. "Thought we'd pay a visit."

"You never just come by to pay a visit."

"I'm hurt."

"You're a worse liar than I am. What's going on?"

"How's Jeanne?"

A flash crossed Jack's face, was gone. "She died. About five years ago."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't think you are, but thank you."

"You still planning on being here a while?"

"Yeah. It's just me and Maggie and Steve now, but we get by."

"I don't think I know Maggie and Steve."

Jack let out a loud whistle. Moments later, two red-haired dogs loped towards them. Amy squealed in delight and bent down to play with them as tongues lolled and tails wagged.

"You know," said the Doctor, "I could bring you a K-9 unit. Robot dogs last much longer than real ones. Might keep you from getting lonely."

Jack reached down to pet one of his dogs. "Amy," he said, "you'll find that the Doctor is the smartest man you'll ever meet, but he really doesn't get humans sometimes."

"I noticed."

"Anyway," said the Doctor. "The fifty-first century is almost over."

"People I know will be alive well into the next one. I'll be here another four or five decades until they're gone." Self-imposed exile wore on him, Ianto could see, but he also read a certain peace in the lines of Jack's face, and that was new. "I've been keeping busy. Writing my memoirs," he said with a twinkle.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "It'll be banned on five hundred worlds even before publication. Probably start religions on a dozen more."

Jack laughed, and it was an easy laugh, of someone who had seen so very much, and who had finally learned how to live with it.

"I need a favour," the Doctor said.

"I was wondering when you'd come out with it. What?"

"I've picked up a temporal refugee. Wrong time, wrong place, needs a place to stay out of the way of history for a bit."

"I'm not running a hotel. Can't a guy be a hermit for a century or two?"

"It's a big enough planet. You could always make him move to the other side of it, you'd hardly ever see each other." The Doctor paused. "Honestly, I want him off the TARDIS. He flirts with Amy and I don't think he likes me much," he said in a loud whisper.

"You could be nicer," Amy said, arms happily embracing a floppy dog. "You're always like this. That poor Tom Milligan … "

"Hush," the Doctor said, but kindly. "I should show you the grounds. Jack's really fixed it all up quite nicely." He extended his arm, and Amy reluctantly let go of the dog. As they walked towards the garden Ianto could just make out beside the house, the Doctor looked over his shoulder directly at the camera. "Are you coming out here or not?"

Ianto flew to the door, and stopped, spending a precious second to check his clothes were neat, his hair arranged. Three thousand years, and he had been certain Jack would forget him well before the first thousand were gone. He was less of a memory than the acrobatic twins, now, surely, and even in his own time, Jack had to scrape his memory for their names.

Twice Jack had fallen in love with him as a stranger. Ianto's luck on third times wasn't good. But he'd never know if he stayed here.

He opened the door, saw Jack watching the Doctor and Amy walking out of sight, confusion drawing his handsome features into a scowl. Jack turned back at the sound of the TARDIS door.

"Hallo, Jack."

The confusion on Jack's face grew, and as it did, Ianto's hopes crumbled. Jack had forgotten, simple as that. They were strangers all over again. He'd just left the man he loved behind for a second time, and this Jack was another unknown, and he ought to be grateful instead of ready to weep for the unfairness.

No. Enough. So be it. He would start back at the beginning, and earn Jack's trust. He'd introduce himself, and Jack would be annoyed with him for a while, and after that amused by him, and finally in love with him. The sun was in the sky and the water was in the sea, he told himself, mouth twisting quietly around the words. He could wait for the rest.

Then Jack tilted his head, and he stared. "Ianto?"

VVVVV

The TARDIS left about twenty minutes later. Neither noticed.

VVVVV  
The End  
VVVVV


End file.
